Plane on a conveyor belt

[dubbsy]

camzaro28 wrote:
haha, yeah once i read dave's post i understood. i was under the assumption that no matter what the plane was at a standstill and was gonna take off like that! i read over it a lil to quick. ah, oh well. i get it now.

YES the plane will take off. maybe i should have read the 9 or so pages b4 posting

I'm really glad you changed your mind.. CMK decided to call me this afternoon to inform me that you believed the plane would not take off....and Brian, I lost a lot of respect for you for a while there.

I'm done replying phisics bullshit....
I'll lose my mind over it..

[Guest]

heh, I'm arguing this point on like 6 forums now....two for airliners, here, MNSC, MisterCMK, and a physics board....fun stuff.

[BlueSRT0483]

And what are the outputs from the airliner forums? j/w!!!

[Guest]

people on both sides of the fence there as well, kinda sad to think that a lot of our pilots seem to think that if their wheels are being spun they can't generate any forward thrust. The key to remember here is that the wheels spin in the same direction whether they are being driven by the thrust of the jet/prop or the conveyor belt...or both. If both forces are acting upon the wheels they double in the amount of rotations they'll make in a given period of time.

[Guest]

http://www.avweb.com/news/columns/191034-1.html

This guy knows what he is talking about.

[Turbo5Oh]

chiming in late here but i think people are looking to deep into it, air speed and ground speed are 2 different things, the landing gear wheels should be thrown out, because they are nuetral doing what ever forces acting apon them want them to causing no affect on the speed of the plane or the conveyor

say the plane needs 50mph of air flying by it to create lift, being the wheels are nuetral why would 50 mph of payment moving under it in the other direction causing the plane to act any differently

think of it this way remembering that air speed and land speed are totaly seperate things

super man is flying along at 50mph of AIR SPEED with a ball bearing pizza cuter in his hand, now flying at this speed he finds a 50 foot long tread mill moving at 50mph LAND SPEED in the other direction

as he fly's by this this tread mill he reaches out and touches the pizza cuter to the moving belt, now does he just stop in mid air?

NO, other than the friction of the pizza cuter his air speed will stay un-affected

but the real question here is how long does it take super man to flay by this 50 miles long tread mill??

makes sense to me but having a simple mind some thing just come more simple to me

[Guest]

I feel sorry for you guys that don't get this when Schell does.....j/k bud, good analogy

[91nbtsi]

Damn, I missed out on this argument. Thanks to all of my advanced mechanical engineering classes...Wait, I don't need any of them. It flys. It would be the same as with a runway that is stationary. The only small difference is the greater rotational friction force from the wheels spinning faster, which is going to be relatively small. Planes move from thrust not like a car...

[AcesHigh]

tjamz wrote:
In your case #1 example, it is impossible for the plane to take off under any circumstances as you are assuming that any friction put on the wheels/bearings is enough to keep it from moving forward under thrust from the engines when in reality the most resistance you are encountering is just to get the plane moving, once it is moving the resistance becomes almost a complete non factor in the equation

Fuck. You got me there. I was imagining a scenario where static friction is strong enough to hold the plane in place. I reread the first post and saw that the belt moving at the same speed as the plane, in which case it wouldn't. Bastard..

[Guest]

YAY, I WIN HERE TOO!!!

I think I just ended a 130+ page long argument on phys.org with my analogies as well. I rule!

[camzaro28]

if the thread would have been called "trick question" instead of "physics ?", i believe more people would have put more thought into it. but oh'well, im an idiot

[91nbtsi]

How can people not understand this?

[Guest]

well, Mythbusters is going to take on this one on January 30th....just thought I'd bring this thread back from the dead for some good arguments til then.

[Parker]

$5 it will fly..... or just roll off the conveyor

[amicheze]

I was going to submit this to them back in the day, but never did. Looking forward to it.

[bubba]

It will fly...

[JohnW]

AFAIK it depends. I am assuming treadmill is movig at the same speed as the engines would be propelling the aircraft forward, thus making the aircraft basically stationary on the treadmill with the wheels spinning. If the airplane has strong enough engines to pull the entire weight into the air without the aid of the lift created by the wings then it will fly, but the engines would have to be pointed at an angle to go 'up'. in this scenerio the aircraft would also be able to lift itself into the air from a standing stop without a treadmill, like a VTOL. in the case of a normal passenger aircraft, where the engines themselves are not enough to pull the aircraft into the air, the aircraft needs to be moving forward at a certain rate of speed (say 150mph) for the wings to create enough lift to get it off the ground. In that case, if the treadmill is keeping the aircraft from moving forward and creating lift, the aircraft will not take off. if you did the same thing in a wind tunnel however, with enough wind to create enough lift under the wings, the aircraft would fly. also if the treadmill were as long or longer than a runway and the engines of the aircraft were somehow strong enough to pull the aircraft forward at takeoff speed against the treadmill (so on a 50mph treadmill, 200mph assuming a 150mph takeoff speed) but not enough to lift the aircraft without the aid of lift created by the wings, it would fly once it reached takeoff speed. just the way i think about it.

as i understand it, most aircraft stay in the air via lift via thrust. the engines are not strong enough to pull a gigantic jetliner into the air from a standing stop. instead, the aircraft has huge wings. the engines move the wings forward at a high enough rate of speed for the wings themselves to create enough lift to get the aircraft into the air. if the aircraft slows down too much, the wings cannot create enough lift and the aircraft stalls and drops until moving again at a high enough rate of speed to create enough lift to get flying again.

as i understand, some of you think an aircraft flies by the thrust of the engines. you would need thrust equal to the weight of the aircraft to get off the ground. can you imagine the amount of power it would take to lift a 747 straight up off the ground? holy shit! you also wouldn't need wings, you could manuver the aircraft with thrust vectoring or varying the angle of attack of the blades like a helicopter.

a few examples:

the harrier jet. the engines produce enough THRUST to lift the aircraft straight up off the ground.

the osprey: the engines spin the blades, which are basically wings, at a high enough rate of speed to create enough LIFT to get the osprey off the ground. In forward flight, the blades are still angled slightly up to retain altitude. the wings are there to keep the blades from wacking into each other, and to facilitate manuverability. A helicopter works in the same way. except without the wings.

amirite?

[JohnW]

here is an example of an aircraft light enough with an engine powerfull enough to cause it to fly without lift. basically it could be thought of as a helicopter with the control surfaces on the aircraft instead of angleing the blades.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMrUuRL7vBg

[Guest]

JohnW;199198 wrote:
AFAIK it depends. I am assuming treadmill is movig at the same speed as the engines would be propelling the aircraft forward, thus making the aircraft basically stationary on the treadmill with the wheels spinning.

And this is where you are wrong. Sorry. The treadmill can spin at 10,000mph, and assuming the tires don't blow/bearings don't fail, the plane will still move forward on the treadmill relative to the stationary ground. Once the plane is moving forward at a fast enough speed there WILL BE AIR FLOWING OVER THE WINGS and the plane will take off.

If you ignore physics and somehow create a treadmill that will be able to hold a plane stationary on it, the plane will not take off. But, if you get to ignore physics for your theory, I get to ignore gravity.

[Guest]

Or think about it this way...I can take a toy car and roll it across to the belt of a belt sander w/ no problem when the sander is off. Turn the sander on and I can still roll the toy car forward on the belt sander. The force of the belt sander is > the force that I can exert on the toy car, yet I am still able to move it across its moving surface. In the treadmill vs plane scenario, the treadmill likely has less force than the jet/prop/whatever of the aircraft and therefore will not inhibit the forward motion of the plane at all. If forward motion is not prevented, the plane will move forward forcing air over the wings and when proper speed is attained for takeoff, the plane will lift off. Every time.