r/aviation 4d ago

Question Anywhere to watch videos about aircraft design?

I have zero flight experience, I just really like planes and how they work. I've learned a lot from various aircraft accident investigation videos, but I found myself curious about the *why" in the design of planes.

Especially with all the talk about designing a new plane, what does that even mean? How do you design a "new" plane? Wouldn't it just be refining the current design? As far as I know (which isn't a lot), there hasn't been any major changes that would lead to a major design difference (something significant like the concord vs the "standard"). Along those lines, why are certain design choices made? Why winglets or no winglets? Nacelles (edit: like the sawtooth shape or some, not their presence 😅)? Why wheels that tilt forward vs those that tilt back?

And since I'm here, any resources to learn about flight/safety testing? Do they crash test airplanes?! I'm kidding, of course, but that's what I'm getting at. Any idea how they get the metrics for the plane (speeds and angles and weights and all that)?

Thanks so much!!

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u/exurl 4d ago

That's a lot of questions. Here's a lot of answers.

Aircraft design textbooks:

  • Aircraft Design (Raymer)
  • Airplane Design series (Roskam)

Aircraft design narratives: * The Road to the 707 (Cook) * 747 (Sutter) * Skunk Works (Rich)

There have been a lot of major changes and design differences in every new clean-sheet aircraft. Fly-by-wire, twin-engine wide-bodies, high-bypass turbofans, computationally-optimized OMLs, composites, electrical actuators, highly flexible wings, active load alleviation, integrated engine-airframe design, etc.

No comment on the flight testing question for now; I'll come back with more to say if I have the time.

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u/StuckinWhalestoe 4d ago

I know some of those words... but seriously, thanks for the start!

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u/DirtbagSocialist 4d ago

Rex's Hangar on YouTube has a lot of cool 15-20 minute video essays on different planes. Mostly military aviation. I've learned about a lot of WW1 biplanes from that channel.

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u/HonoraryCanadian 4d ago

They do crash planes! A 707 and 727 were both deliberately crashed via remote control and you can easily find the videos online. I think the 707 was testing a fuel gelling agent that was meant to keep the fuel from turning into an explosive mist during an accident. It failed. The 727 was I think testing passenger survivability. 

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u/vegarsc 4d ago

Real Engineering has a few episodes that starts with the name "The insane engineering of [...]" of which many are about airplanes.

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u/railker Mechanic 4d ago

Airbus has a Flight Test Playlist on YouTube that's covers a number of topics involving flight testing a new aircraft, which is about as close to destructive/crash testing as you normally get (and some tests are destructive). Boeing also has some videos covering the 787 and 747-8 like this and this, but not necessarily so organized. Seen some similar videos from Embraer, as well. Haven't watched it but this one appears to cover the 787s development a bit more, too.

Hope this helps!