Flaps increase the camber, and sometimes the area, of your wing. When you increase the camber of your wing, you also increase the amount of lift your wing can produce. With flaps down, your wing can produce more lift at slower speeds.
Using flaps gives you three distinct advantages in your plane:
- You can produce more lift, giving you lower takeoff and landing speeds
- You can produce more drag, allowing a steeper descent angle without increasing your airspeed on landing
- You can reduce the length of your takeoff and landing roll
There are 4 primary flap designs, and each of them have advantages and disadvantages. Here’s how they work.
1) Plain Flaps
The most simple flap is the plain flap. Plain flaps hinge to the back of the wing, and they pivot down when you extend them. However, they’re fairly limited in the amount of lift they can create. That’s because as air moves over the wing, it loses energy and starts to separate from the wing. By extending flaps, the airflow separation is even more pronounced, creating a large wake behind the wing.
But you can use that wake to your advantage. The drag created by the wake lets you fly a steeper descent to landing without increasing your airspeed.
2) Split Flaps
Next up are split flaps, which deflect from the lower surface of the wing. Split flaps produce slightly more lift than plain flaps, but like their plain counterparts, they also produce a lot of drag.
Split flaps are pretty uncommon these days, but you can find them on the wings of several warbirds at your local airshow.
3) Slotted Flaps
Slotted flaps are the most commonly used flaps today, and they can be found on both small and large aircraft. What makes them so special? Two things:
- They increase wing camber, like other flaps
- When extended, they open a slot between the wing and the flap
By opening a slot between the wing and the flap, high pressure air from the bottom of the wing flows through the slot into the upper surface. This adds energy to the wing’s boundary layer, delays airflow separation, and produces less drag. The result? Lots of additional lift, without the excessive drag.
4) Fowler Flaps
When you need serious lift, you need serious flaps, and Fowlers are there to make it happen. Fowler flaps increase the area of your wing by extending out on rails or tracks. Fowler flaps often have a series of slots to add energy to the airflow as well – they’re called slotted-Fowler flaps.
In the first stages of a Fowler flap’s extension, there’s a large increase in lift, but little increase in drag, making the setting ideal for takeoff in a large jet. As they continue to extend, the flaps move downward more and more, creating a little more lift, but a lot more drag.
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