zwiteof | 10 years ago | on: Git Cheat Sheet
zwiteof's comments
zwiteof | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: Please provide resume templates?
zwiteof | 10 years ago | on: Why Airplane Wings Oscillate in Turbulence
It sounds logical if you don't have a background in aerospace, but otherwise it's relatively inaccurate. For example:
> So far my best guess is that it's related to landing gear. Landing gear makes significant portion of the total weight
Landing gear makes up roughly 3% of the total takeoff weight. Hardly significant compared to fuel and cargo/passengers. [1]
> you want to keep it short and compact.
This is certainly true from a structural standpoint.
> Engines are the heaviest things in passenger planes, so landing gear is close to engines.
Compared to a person, yes. Compared to the total cargo/passengers, not really. The 787 MGTOW is ~500,000, of that, the two GE GEnx-1B engines weight about 26,000 lb combined.
The landing gear is "close to the engines" in your example picture, but this is because you typically place the main landing gear such that it is near the center of gravity. The nose gear only supports 8-15% [2] of the aircraft weight to make steering possible while taxiing. Some commercial aircraft have tail mounted engines such as the MD-80 (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Allegian...). The wing (and landing gear) are indeed further aft since the CG is moved back further due to the engine placement.
In addition, comparing the number of wheels is a red herring for a commercial jet v. a cargo plane. The CG location relative to the wheelbase will be remarkably similar in both cases. However, military cargo planes often operate out of poor and/or shorter airfields. This limits the amount of weight you can put on each wheel if you're landing on asphalt rather than reinforced concrete, so you have more wheels with less load per wheel to keep from sinking into the ground. In addition, more wheels allows you to slow down quicker since you can spread out the braking action.
> With cargo plane the heaviest part of the plane is the cargo.
The cargo/passengers are a significant portion for commercial transports as well. Again for the 787, you've got around 100,000 in cargo/passengers (about 20% mass fraction). The C-17 carries 170,000 lbs of cargo with a 585,000 MGTOW giving a mass fraction of 29%. Not too surprising they have a higher mass fraction there since they're not adding any parasitic mass for things like passenger comfort.
lotsoffactors' comments on cargo loading/unloading considerations and the U-2 being a mid-wing aircraft are correct as well.
Sources: Aerospace Engineer and Raymer's Aircraft Design textbook (basically the bible of aircraft design).
[1] Chapter 15 of Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach (3rd Edition) by Daniel Raymer
[2] Chapter 11 of Raymer
zwiteof | 10 years ago | on: Why Airplane Wings Oscillate in Turbulence
zwiteof | 10 years ago | on: Why Airplane Wings Oscillate in Turbulence
zwiteof | 10 years ago | on: Why Airplane Wings Oscillate in Turbulence
zwiteof | 10 years ago | on: Python metric learning code issue
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: Jobs for young/old FORTRAN programmers?
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: Why fuel cell cars don't work
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution you are currently using?
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: What was your thesis topic?
https://etd.ohiolink.edu/ap/10?106431717476248::NO:10:P10_ET...
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: Is all code worth sharing?
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: The X-15, the fastest manned aircraft ever made
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: What stock will you buy in 2015?
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: The LaTeX cargo cult
I'm in the midst of creating a document from scratch with LaTeX for the first time (as opposed to using a template provided to me) and while some things have been annoying, it's mostly been the learning curve of figuring how to do what I wanted. Tables are a mess though. It seems like I need to stitch 3 different packages together to do what I want with my tables.
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: Why is Chrome so much less graphically performant than Safari?
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: Mysterious US spaceplane returns to Earth
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: Was there really a dot com bubble?
Factoring in inflation would that still be true? Do the internet companies make up a significant percentage of the stock market like they did in 2000? Is this comparison even valid since I'd expect the tech/internet sector to have grown significantly as the internet has matured since 2000?
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: What Open Source FEA Software Do You Use?
zwiteof | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: What Open Source FEA Software Do You Use?
I've tried to use git a few times at work, but I always end up forgetting to use it for awhile when deadlines start creeping up so it becomes "well, the code works in it's current state and it's been 2 months since I committed, so I should probably update the repo" which doesn't seem much better than periodically backing up the folder.