Grumman X

Grumman X-29 By Pace Essay I have chosen to do my book report on the book The Grumman X-29, by StevePace, for a couple of reasons. Ive seen the X-29 in flight at an air show andwas mystified by its wing design. I asked myself how could something like thatfly at all? This book shed some light on the mysteries of how the X-29 flies andperforms. I am going to tell you a little about the book and the X-29, so sitback relax and enjoy the fruits of my reading labor. The X-29 is a single-engineaircraft 48.1 feet long. Its forward-swept wing has a span of 27.2 feet. EachX-29 was powered by a General Electric F404-GE-400 engine producing 16,000pounds of thrust. Empty weight was 13,600 pounds, while takeoff weight was17,600 pounds. The wing substructure and the basic airframe itself are aluminumand titanium. Wing trailing edge actuators controlling camber are mountedexternally in streamlined fairings because of the thinness of the supercriticalairfoil. The aircraft had a maximum operating altitude of 50,000 feet, a maxi mumspeed of Mach 1.6, and a flight endurance time of approximately one hour. Overall, VFC, like the forward-swept wings, showed promise for the future ofaircraft design. The X-29 did not demonstrate the overall reduction inaerodynamic drag that earlier studies had suggested, but this discovery shouldnot be interpreted to mean that a more optimized design with forward-swept wingscould not yield a reduction in drag. Overall, the X-29 program demonstratedseveral new technologies as well as new uses of proven technologies. Theseincluded: aero elastic tailoring to control structural divergence; use of arelatively large, close-coupled canard for longitudinal control; control of anaircraft with extreme instability while still providing good handling qualities;use of three-surface longitudinal control; use of a double-hinged trailing-edgeflap at supersonic speeds; control effectiveness at high angle of attack; vortexcontrol; and military utility of the overall design. The book was overall veryinformative in the sense that all terms and ideas were explained clearly an dsimply in order to communicate to the general public better versus someone whois educated in the aeronautics field. I highly recommend this book to someonelooking for a little overall knowledge of the X-29, but if you are looking forin-depth report and analysis you should look elsewhere. Bibliographyhttp://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/PAO/PAIS/HTML/FS-008-DFRC.html