Aeronautical Engineering
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The aeronautical engineer is involved in the design, development and modification of the components and systems of all types of flight vehicles – including fixed wing aircraft, helicopters, sail planes, airships and missiles. The design process involves calculations, simulations, prototyping and many other processes that can be used to prove that the designed vehicle will work. The basic calculations are how to model or shape air frames and other parts of the design to get the desired forces from it. This is done since we cannot model air, so we model what we can then use air to get the desired forces. Different airplanes, missiles, fixed wings and rotary winged aircrafts fly at different speeds and carry different payloads and fly at different ranges and flight times, aeronautical engineering allows us to design different body types to reach the desired forces.
Physics
These include Newton’s laws, Laws of thermodynamics etc. Newton’s laws are used to determine the forces required to get the airplane in the air.
Laws of thermodynamics are used to determine how the pressure changes with altitude and how heat is transferred from one place to another, this
helps us know where not to place certain objects in the aircraft, and what material can we use for these components.
Chemistry
This helps us determine the fuel to use since temperature changes with altitude, the higher the altitude, the colder it becomes. We want fuel that
will not freeze when the airplane is flying higher. This also plays a part in choosing materials.
Geography
Different places have different atmospheric conditions. We use the knowledge from here to determine the material and aerodynamic structures of
airplanes or aircrafts.
Mathematics
We use Maths to model or aircrafts shapes and aerodynamic structure. For example, the parabolic shape of a parabola looks like the side view of a front of an airplane
if is turned sideways.
