The drag on an airplane taking off from a floating runway

Abstract

The motions of an infinitely long, two-dimensional runway subjected to the dynamic moving load imposed by an airplane taking off are investigated. The runway is assumed to be floating in an inviscid fluid and is initially at equilibrium before the plane takes off. The deformation of the runway resulting from the take-off is wave-like and moves in the same direction as the plane. The maximum drag occurs when the plane catches up with the first wave. Three different runway configurations were considered: a baseline and ones which were ten and one hundred times more flexible than the baseline. For these runways, the added drag to the aircraft was very small, ranging from 1% for the stiffest to 10% for the most flexible runway.