Flight Simulator says a plane gets lift due to the shape of the wing. How is flying upside down possible?

Question

Flight Simulator says a plane gets lift due to the shape of the wing. How is flying upside down possible?

Answer 1

Upside down's easy. Better question. How do they fly on knife edge.

Answer 2

When inverted the camber of the wing might work against lift, but the wing can still create lift by deflecting air downward.

Also, the engine's thrust might have a downward component.

Answer 3

Good question.  Planes fly normally (upside right) for two reasons: Bernoulli's Principle (faster gas exerts less pressure) and Newton's third law of motion (action, reaction). So Mr. Bernoulli and Mr. Newton are both at work.

When a plane is upside down, the wing still displaces air equivalent to the mass of the plane due to a much higher angle of attack, but it does not get any benefit from Mr. Bernoulli.  So the short answer is that an airplane is not nearly as efficient flying upside down as it is normally, as only Mr. Newton is helping it stay aloft.

EDIT - one of the other answers suggests that Bernoulli's Prinicipal and Newton's third law are dependent on each other - that is just plain wrong. The shape of an airplane wing has been designed using both of those physical properties, but they act independently of each other.   Depending on the type of airplane, the air foil (shape of the wing) is optimized for the flight characteristics it will be subjected to, with a maximimum of lift and a minimum of drag at various flight regimes.  Obviously a passenger airliner will not be expected to fly upside down.  Its wing shape is engineered to work most efficiently upside right and at high subsonic speeds, while still allowing the plane to be controlled at lower speeds for takeoffs and landings with the wing being modified by flaps, slats, and other devices - so Bernoulli's Principle is a big design characteristic to maximize lift while minimizing drag at a certain airspeed.  A fighter jet or aerobatic plane will have its wing shape designed with more Newton than Bernoulli, so a fighter jet is much more capable of inverted flight than a passenger plane.  Either way, its still the angle of attack that needs to be increased for a plane to fly upside down, and that makes it inefficient.

A complex answer to a simple question, and I hope that helps!

Answer 4

The pilot has control of the wing surfaces and can compensate for the effects of gravity leaving lift to be reversed. This will present an argument in which the laws of Newton will be superfluous and the Bernoulli's principle will prevail.

Answer 5

Normally the planes that fly upside-down have the same wing shape on the upper camber and lower camber, meaning they can create lift on either side.

Answer 6

speed

Answer 7

Any flat surface placed at an angle to the airflow will produce lift.  The curvature you see on most wings is simply to increase the efficiency of the lift and reduce drag.

Supercritical airfoils that are used on virtually all modern airliners actually use a fairly flat top and curved bottom and they produce lift just fine.

As for this Bernoulli vs Newton c**p, there is no such thing.  Newton needs Bernoulli to work, Bernoulli needs Newton to work.  The only way Newton can produce lift by himself is with flat plate lift which will create the same lift coefficient with ten times the drag.

The best explanation of lift I have ever seen is this one.  It even explains how lift is produced when flying upside down.

http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.htm...

http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.htm...

Answer 8

Planes do get lift due to the shape of the wings.

The same way its possible upright.

Answer 9

The same way it does up-right with a few other strange things!

In Straight and level un-accelerated flight all forces are equal. Now, If gravity vectors downwards, Lift opposes and is perpendicular to Flight Path and thrust and Drag is Horizontal but opposes each other, then lets turn it upside-down. Now we have lift (from wing) and weight in the downward position, and thrust and drag still remains in the same direction. Since the force is greater the pilot now has to make enough opposing lift to support the downward forces as to remain level or to climb up-side-down. This is were the Horizontal Stabilizer comes in (on the emmpenage area). It has to generate enough lift to oppose gravity and the following lift towards the earth. Now, in this case i would increase alot more thrust if I intend to climb or remain level, because of the amount of lift needed, in turn making lots of drag.

So grab hold of your belongings, full Aileron deflection and Pitch forward.