Date: 19 Feb 98 01:33:56
From: Don Stauffer <stauffer@htc.honeywell.com>
Organization: honeywell
References: 1
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Lion's Pers Agentschap wrote:
> What is the reason that airliners have engines under the wing instead
> of on it?
...
> Building aircraft with engines on the wing is very well possible.
> Examples are: VFW-Fokker VFW-614, Antonov An-72/74 and Boeing YC-14.
If I remember the competition for the C-17, the Douglas version had
engines under the wings, while the Boeing version had engines on upper
side of wings. Now, for stol reasons, the engines were blowing the
flaps, and the term upper side blowing and lower side blowing were
used. So I don't know if the reasons that resulted in the Douglas
design being selected over the Boeing design had any thing to do with
that.
I was under the impression that Boeing hung engines away from wing,
rather than building them into the wing, ala Comet, was concern for wing
structural integrity in case of an uncontained catastrophic engine
failure.
However, sticking engines above wing and forward would help that. In
fact, didn't a short haul German airliner have just that feature?
One factor might be engine maintainance. On a big aircraft, if the
engine is above the leading edge by the same distance existing Boeing
engines are below it, one would need a pretty impressive scaffold to
service it.
--
Don Stauffer in Minneapolis
home web site- http://home1.gte.net/stauffer/
home email- stauffer@gte.net
work email- stauffer@htc.honeywell.com
