The Wright brothers refer to Orville Wright (1871.8.19-1948.1.30) and wilbur wright (1867.4.4586).
Invented airplane
1896, two brothers heard the news that German aviation pioneer Otto Lindauer (also translated as Otto Lilienthal) was killed in a gliding flight. Supposedly, this news is a blow to people who dream of flying, but the Wright brothers, who are familiar with mechanical devices, believe that the foundation of human powered flight is actually mature enough. Li Lindal's problem is that he hasn't had time to discover the trick of operating the plane. After summing up the failure of Li Lindal, the Wright brothers enthusiastically devoted themselves to the study of power flight.
The Wright brothers not only tried to master the previous research results, but also paid great attention to learning directly from the living flying objects-birds. They often lie on their backs, carefully observe eagles flying in the air for hours, and study and think about the mechanism of their take-off, lifting and hovering. Many novel ideas put forward by them in those years have been applied in the aviation industry in the future.
The second from left and the third from left are the Wright brothers.
On the basis of learning from predecessors, the Wright brothers began to develop airplanes. Unable to get other people's support, they used the money earned from the bicycle business to develop the plane. The cooperation between the two brothers is perfect. My younger brother Wilbur is diligent and practical, with the care and caution of an engineer; My younger brother Orville is full of the artist's imagination and dares to innovate constantly. Two clever brains work closely together and complement each other, just as Wilbur said, "Orville and I live together, work together and think together, just like one person." The two brothers believe that whether the plane can fly smoothly depends on how to design and control the balance of various forces during the flight. Wilbur wright demonstrated this problem with a piece of paper placed horizontally: if it is allowed to fall freely, we can imagine that it must fall smoothly in an ideal calm air, but there are few ideal conditions, and any airflow will make the paper flip and float. For an airplane, it is not difficult to reach the sky in a perfect air condition, but there is always wind in the sky, which makes the key to realize the flight of the airplane lie in how to adjust the force balance of the airplane in all directions, especially the relationship between the center of gravity of the airplane and the force point of lift. In the early days, we were worried that the wing area would be too large to make the aircraft difficult to operate, so the wing area was generally not too large. For example, the wing area of Li Liansal.
Wilbur Wright
Is 15 1 square foot, Pechell is 165 square foot, and Chalut is 143 square foot. This makes the lift that the aircraft can get insufficient. In contrast, the weight of the pilot accounts for a large part of the lift. In this case, the change of the pilot's own position will seriously affect the center of gravity of the aircraft. At that time, the general design idea was to use this point to control the flight attitude of the aircraft by changing the pilot's body position. But it is this kind of thinking that seriously restricts the improvement of aircraft maneuverability, so the Wright brothers decided to change this technical thinking. They first carefully studied the previous experimental data, and then verified it through a large number of kite, glider and wind tunnel tests, and designed the best wing section shape and angle in order to obtain the maximum lift. Then it was decided to double the average area of the wing to 308 square feet. Most importantly, they designed a mechanism to control the flight attitude of the aircraft by directly controlling the wings. At the same time, after the overall lift of the aircraft increases, the aircraft is not so sensitive to the change of the pilot's own position, which makes the maneuverability of the aircraft not lower than that of the winglet aircraft, although the wing area is greatly increased! The two brothers think that there are three main obstacles in building an aircraft: (1) how to make a lift wing; (2) How to get the power to drive the plane to fly; (3) How to balance and control the plane after taking off. The first two problems have been solved to some extent.
At first, the two brothers tried to make a full-scale glider. For four summers in a row, they went to North Carolina, and the destination was an isolated headland. The meteorological department suggested to them that the headland is a favorable driving range because of its strong wind. Soon after, they made the first unmanned biplane glider and put it into the sky like a kite. They also installed an elevator in front of the plane, which is a kind of swinging rudder and can be used to operate the vertical axis and the horizontal axis.
1900 One evening in June, wilbur wright was lying on the fragile glider skeleton, floating against the sea breeze. He succeeded. Although the flight was only a few seconds, only 1 meter high, the achievements of the Wright brothers surpassed those of Li Lindal who tried to control the flight by moving his body weight. In the second year, the two brothers made a glider after many improvements on the basis of the last one. This autumn, they came to the seaside of Kitty Hawk again. After an experiment, the flying altitude suddenly reached 180 meters.
Brother Wright
From 1900 to 1903, they built three gliders and made more than 1000 gliding flights. They also made more than 200 different kinds of wings, made thousands of wind tunnel experiments, corrected some wrong flight data of Li Lindal, and designed the cross-sectional shape of wings with greater lift. During this period, their gliders glided more than 1000 meters many times. At that time, this was no small achievement. After continuous research and improvement, the Wright brothers not only quickly mastered the aircraft manufacturing technology at that time, but also made major breakthroughs in many aspects. From the summer of 1903, the Wright brothers began to build this famous "Voyager I" biplane. Power flight needs an engine first, but there were no aircraft engines on the market at that time, and no company was willing to take the risk of manufacturing aircraft engines. But the two brothers were not discouraged. They hired a mechanic, Charles? Taylor (Charles? Taylor) helped them build a piston engine with about 12 horsepower and a weight of 77.2 kilograms. With the engine, Wilbur and Oliver only hope that windy autumn will come soon. In June 5438+10/mid-October, Voyager was assembled, and Orville was very satisfied with the new plane. "This is the best plane we have ever made. She is very obedient. " Orville's feelings are not difficult to understand. They made every rib of Voyager One.
The miracle happened in 1903 12 17! ! !
People fly into the sky.
This morning, the Kitty Hawk in North Carolina was still sleeping. The cold wind blows hard, and a strange guy with huge wings stops quietly on the empty beach. This is the first plane in human history-"Voyager One". The clearing was deserted, and only five people went to the scene to watch it. 10: 35, everything is ready. In order to get on the plane first, the two brothers decided to flip a coin to decide who would get on the plane first. As a result, Orville won.
Orville climbed onto the lower wing of Voyager One, crouched behind the joystick, and held the wooden joystick tightly in his hand, while Wilbur started the engine and pushed it to slide. Under the action of the engine, the plane vibrates violently at first. After a few seconds, it slowly slid down from the "magic mound" under the impetus of its own power. When the plane reached a certain speed, Wilbur released his hand and the plane flew off the ground like a bird. Although Voyager 1 flew very unevenly and even stumbled a little, it flew in the air for 12 seconds ***36.5 meters before landing on the beach. Then, they took turns flying three times. On the last flight of the day, Wilbur flew 260 meters in 59 seconds with a wind speed of 30 kilometers. People's dream of manned sustained power flight in the air has finally succeeded! Unfortunately, a few minutes later, a sudden gust of wind overturned "Flying Man" 1, and the plane was seriously damaged, but it has completed its historical mission. Thus began the history of human powered aviation.