Glossary
Accident: an air transportation event, when an aircraft is partially or totally destroyed with fatalities or severe injures on people Aircraft: a vehicle able to fly.
Aircraft axis: a three rectangular reference axis XYZ, with the origin at aircraft CG, the plane XZ coincident with the symmetry aircraft plane Airplane: a vehicle, heavier than air, able to fly utilizing fixed wings.
Air Transportation System: all organizations involved in the air transportation, considered as a whole.
Aircraft Manufactures: companies that involved in design, manufacturing, certification, partially or totally an aircraft.
Air Traffic Controller: organization that manage the air traffic.
Atoms, Molecules: elementary particles of which the matter is made according atomic or molecular theory.
Anti-icing: a system that avoids the ice accretion on an aircraft parties.
Approach: phase of an aircraft flight during which it descends from cruise altitude to perform landing manoeuvres.
Aerodynamic Centre: the point where is mathematically applied the resultant force of aerodynamic interaction.
Beam: in Construction Sciences is a structural element with the length much more larger than the other two and with regular form.
Bending, Bending Moment: is an elementary load (defined for a beam), that cause the element to be bent.
Cabin: the internal part of an aircraft fuselage devoted to transportation of passengers or goads ( for a full cargo).
Certification, Certification Organization: activities devoted to demonstrate compliance of all requirements issued by the related organization. Documentation that allow the airplane to fly.
Climb: is the flight phase during which an airplane, after the take off phase, goes up to the cruise altitude t.
Cockpit: the internal part of an aircraft fuselage devoted to the pilots work and that contents most of devices and instrumentation to manage the aircraft flight.
Compression: is an elementary load (defined for a beam), that cause the element to be shortened.
Control, Control surfaces: the airplane capability to annul the force moment about the aircraft axis or to obtain force moment to change aircraft motion parameters. This capability is possible by means of the control surfaces: elevator, rudder, ailerons (or spoilers).
Cruise: is the flight phase with practically constant altitude and speed . It could be made of several segments with different speed and altitude parameters because of navigations procedures.
De-icing system: a system that breaks down the ice already accreted on an aircraft parties Design: the word indicates the activities and/or the documentation (calculation and drawings) that allow an aircraft to be manufactured.
Drag: is the resistance to motion of a body moving through a liquid or a gas (external flow) or the resistance to motion that a liquid or gas meets flowing inside a pipe. It is due to friction and unbalanced pressure.
Empennage: is equivalent to tail surfaces. In a conventional airplane is situated at rear part of the airplane.
Engine System: the aircraft system that transform (usually chemically) the internal energy of a substance (fuel) in thermal and mechanical energy, above all, to obtain the propulsion force.
Elevator: the mobile part of the horizontal tail plane, that allows to annul or change the force moment about the pitch axis.
Elementary Force: is the pressure or the unitary shear multiplied by an element of the external aircraft surface.
Fatality: is equivalent to “dead”, the worth is used in aeronautic accidents.
Fin: the fixed part of the vertical tail plane, that allows motion stability against a side disturb Fuselage: the airplane part that contains passengers and goads and connects wing and empennage (conventional airplanes).
Fly, Flying vehicle: we speak of a flying object (on the Earth) if the object weight is prevalently balanced by a force perpendicular to the direction of the relative airspeed (examples of not flying objects: a vertically falling object, a vertically lunched missile, an object moving trough the air with an inertial (about) parabolic trajectory.
Gas: one of the matter status, that assumes the volume and the form of the container Gravity Centre: for a extended rigid body is the point where I supposed that the resultant force of gravity (or more in general all mass forces) exercise its action.
Incident: event in aeronautical transport normally managed by procedures, with sometimes little injuries to people or damage to the aircraft. Landing: flight phase that start at some height from the ground and take the airplane to a speed at which it moves only by the landing gear.
Lift: the force perpendicular to the air speed that is predominant in balance the aircraft weight. Limit Load: is the maximum value above which some aeronautic structural element failures or loss its functionality.
Liquid: one of the matter status, that maintains its volume and assumes the form of the container Loads: are the concentrated or distributed forces acting on an aircraft considered from structural point of view.
Mission, mission profile: in air transport is the task that an aircraft is called to make; the mission profile is a schematic representation of all phases of that task.
Propulsion System: for an airplane is the system that produce propulsion force (propeller or nozzle).
Procedures: in aeronautic field are a set of regulations to accomplish a normal or emergency task.
Pressure: is the ratio between the component of a force perpendicular to a surface and the surface area.
Rudder: the mobile part of the vertical tail plane, that allows to balance a yaw force moment.
Security: is all concerning danger that could come from abnormal people behaviour.
Safety (active, passive): is any serious danger that could come from a technical of procedural failure in the Air Transportation System and technology to prevent it. Active safety technology is devoted to avoid accidents, passive safety technology is devoted to safe life or avoid severe injuries even in the case an accident occurs.
Structural Resistance: is the capability of an aeronautical structure to withstand external forces (loads).
Stabilizer: the fixed part of the horizontal tail plane, that allows motion stability against a pitch disturb.
Stability, stable, neutral, unstable: the concepts are concerning either the aircraft motion or the structural resistance. The terms are associated to the word “equilibrium”. The equilibrium is stable, neutral or unstable, if the system tends to return to the original position, or to remain to the new position, or to go away from the original position.
Solid: one of the matter status, that maintains its volume and its form.
Take Off: flight phase during which the airplane accelerates on the runway to the lift off speed.
Tail planes: see "empennage".
Wing: the airplane part on which the lift is generated.
