Flight Dynamics Lab

An interactive student laboratory for understanding the forces and decisions behind flight.

Ringkasan Indonesia: Flight Dynamics Lab adalah laboratorium interaktif untuk mempelajari lift, drag, stall speed, dan glide ratio melalui model aerodinamika sederhana yang transparan dan dapat diuji.

Author: Devina Azaria
Status: v0.2.0 — performance-envelope release
Focus: aerodynamics, physics, scientific computing, and aerospace engineering

Live laboratory

GitHub Pages: https://devinaazaria.github.io/flight-dynamics-lab/

Deployment is automated from the main branch. Every deployment runs the scientific model tests before publishing the static laboratory.

Why this project exists

Flight is a useful bridge between classroom physics and engineering decisions. This project turns a few core aerodynamic relationships into small experiments so that changing speed, wing area, air density, mass, or aerodynamic coefficients produces an explainable result.

The laboratory complements astronomy-lab and supports Devina's longer-term interest in mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Current experiments

1. Aerodynamic forces — calculates lift and drag from dynamic pressure and coefficients.
2. Stall speed — estimates the minimum speed at which lift balances aircraft weight.
3. Glide performance — converts lift-to-drag ratio into an approximate glide angle.
4. Performance envelope — sweeps airspeed to visualize dynamic pressure and lift/drag trends.
5. Stall trade study — compares stall speed across aircraft mass and wing-area variations.
6. Sensitivity & uncertainty — shows one-at-a-time sensitivity and a bounded corner-case range for stall speed.

Scientific assumptions

• Airflow is represented by the standard lift/drag equations.
• The aircraft is treated as steady and level for the lift calculation.
• Stall speed uses a maximum lift coefficient and standard gravity.
• Glide angle uses the simplified relation tan(γ) = D/L.
• Sensitivity ranges are deterministic input variations, not statistical confidence intervals.
• Real aircraft have compressibility, turbulence, Reynolds-number, trim, and three-dimensional effects that are outside the current simplified model.

Run locally

npm start

Open http://localhost:4174.

Test

npm test

Portfolio authorship

Each future release should include Devina's own notes on the question, equation, assumptions, manual verification, and limitations. Technical review may be provided through DevinaHQ, while authorship should remain accurately documented.

Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md.

License

MIT