Planes – Fuel tanks

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We will analyze the importance and characteristics of aircraft fuel tanks, which generally, They are located on the wings of the wings..

post writer by: Juan Matheus

We close and reach the fourth installment related to Why do planes fly?, in this we will review the details of the aircraft fuel tanks, part that takes on more importance every day due to the variation in the cost of aviation fuel.

Fuel tank

Contrary to what one might think, the structure of an airplane wing is hollow. Inside there are structural elements that give it its shape and structural rigidity., However, there is a lot of hollow and free space inside. This makes it the perfect place to locate fuel.. You may not have thought about how much fuel a plane carries, but it is a much larger sum than you would have imagined. a boeing 747-400 burns approximately 70 a 80 tons of kerosene to get from London to New York and it can take more than 200,000 liters of fuel. this is a lot of weight.

And weight is a crucially important variable in aviation.. So that you can imagine it better, an airline allows you to take a suitcase of 23kg per passenger. What the plane requires of fuel is equivalent to more or less 3000 suitcases, totally full. Now do you understand why they don't like to let you pass that overweight?

In view of the fact that it is a large volume of fuel, it is stored in “non-useful” space instead of using the fuselage of the plane where the cabin goes, baggage and cargo, but there are other reasons. The wing is located in the center of the fuselage. This means that as the fuel is emptied, do it evenly without drastically changing the plane's center of gravity. What would happen if the fuel was emptied from front to back? The weight would be poorly distributed and would generate all kinds of problems when flying. further, that center of gravity stays low.

Before each flight, an aircraft is weighed to know its center of gravity and to be able to maneuver it within the appropriate standards., otherwise it is unstable. Similarly, these parameters are constantly adjusted throughout the flight, because the weight and the center of gravity are constantly changing.

There is an additional reason. An airplane is always in its heaviest state before takeoff because it has not burned fuel yet.. The wings are what create all the lift and that upward force that lifts the plane.. The weight of the fuel helps to counteract all the force that the wing generates and prevents the structure from bending beyond its modulus of elasticity and does not affect its structural integrity..

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