Trending List of Aircraft Parts Manufacturers and Components

Aircraft are incredibly complex machines that have been developed through years of engineering throughout aviation history. Although aircraft parts have many differing designs and are used for many different things, most of them feature the same main components. These include the fuselage, wings, empennage, landing gear, and power plant. Let’s take a look at each.

The fuselage is the section of the aircraft parts that includes the cabin and cockpit, as well as room for cargo and attachment points for other critical aircraft components. Some aircraft use an open or truss structure constructed from steel or aluminum tubing.
 
Attached to the fuselage are the wings. These are airfoils attached to both sides of the fuselage that serve as the main lifting surfaces that support the aerospace during flight. There is a broad range of wing designs, sizes, and shapes used by various aerospace parts manufacturers. Each type has different characteristics and fulfills a different need in terms of the required performance of a given aircraft. Wings can be attached to the top, middle, or lower part of the fuselage, and these configurations are referred to as high, mid, and low-wing respectively.
 
The number of wings an aircraft has can also vary. Aircraft with one set of wings are called monoplanes, while those with two sets are known as biplanes. High-wing aircraft parts feature external braces or wing struts that transmit the flight and landing loads through the struts to the main fuselage structure. As the wing parts are usually attached roughly halfway out on the wing, wing structures of this type are known as semi-cantilever. A few high-wing and most low-wing aircraft have a full cantilever wing to carry the loads without the need for external struts.
 
The empennage, also known as the tail, is the rear part of the aircraft. This typically includes the stabilizers, rudder, and elevator, in addition to many other components. In fighter jets or other high performance aircraft, the empennage may be constructed around the equate nozzle like in certain three-engine aircraft. In commercial aircraft, the empennage is built from the cabin pressure-cone and may contain the flight data recorder (black box), cockpit voice recorder, as well as the pressure out-flow valve.
 
To help the aircraft move in three dimensions, control surfaces are also used. Control surfaces are usually found on the wings and the empennage, the extremes of the aircraft, to help get the maximum strength and response using small moving parts. The most common control surfaces are the vertical stabilizer & rudder, horizontal stabilizer & elevator, aileron, and trim tab. The vertical stabilizer operates similarly to a wing, but does so symmetrically. It is the main control surface of fixed-wing aircraft parts and is usually in the tail of the aircraft. Some large aircraft have multiple vertical stabilizers. One part of the vertical stabilizer is the rudder. When moved to one side or another, the rudder produces a pressure difference that changes the wing’s angle of attack. The rudder controls the aircraft’s Y-axis and is controlled via pedals in the cockpit.
 
The horizontal stabilizer is the main control surface of the aircraft. It functions like a wing, creating a second point of lift along the fuselage to provide stability to the aircraft in the Z-axis. The function of the horizontal stabilizer is not to provide more lift, but to control the pitch by modifying the wing’s angle of attack. It is able to do this because of the elevators, which act like an aileron parts and are controlled by the longitudinal axis of the joystick or wheel.
 
Another control surface, ailerons, are moving surfaces near the tips of the wings. Their function is simple - it is to move upwards or downward to modify the angle of attack of a wing. The change in aerodynamics is due to the aileron’s changing of the relative curve of the airfoil. Ailerons are controlled by the pilot through the lateral axis of the joystick. The final control surface, trim tabs, are small surfaces connected to the trailing edge of a large control surface on an aircraft. Their main purpose is to counteract aerodynamic forces to stabilize the aircraft in a particular attitude.
 
Landing gear, another critical part of every aircraft, is the undercarriage of an aerospace parts used for takeoff and landing. Furthermore, when the aircraft is not flying, the landing gear supports the aircraft and allows it to taxi without damage. Wheeled landing gear is the most common type, but configurations with skis, floats, and skids also exist. High-speed aircraft have retractable landing gear that can be folded away during flight to cut down on resistance caused by drag.
 
The final part of an aircraft is its power plant. There are four common types of power plants: propeller, piston engine, jet engine, and turboprop. A propeller is a device that transmits power by converting it into thrust to propel a vehicle through air by rotating two or more twisted blades around a central shaft. Piston engines are common, four-stroke cycle engines. They are designed specifically for aircraft, so they use aviation gas and have special characteristics. Engines of this type are commonly used in tandem with a propeller and components. Jet engines produce thrust by compressing air and releasing it through a directed pipe or nozzle to create thrust. They comprise a chamber or valve, a fan, one or more compressors, a combustion chamber, one or more turbines, and an exhaust. Finally, a turboprop is a jet engine used to drive a propeller. This provides a more reliable engine than piston engines, without the complexity of a standard jet engine.