fuselage

fuselage

the main body of an aircraft, excluding the wings, tailplane, and fin

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

fuselage

[′fyü·sə‚läzh]

(aerospace engineering)

In an airplane, the central structure to which wings and tail are attached; it accommodates flight crew, passengers, and cargo.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Fuselage

The component of an aircraft that provides the payload containment and the structural connection for the wing and the empennage (tail assembly). The fuselage and the wing are major structural components of an aircraft. The fuselage is the mounting structure for the horizontal and tail surfaces that provides stability as well as the means of introducing pitch and yaw control to the aircraft. For some aircraft like fighter and private aircraft, the fuselage houses the engine or engines. The nose or tail gear and the main landing gear are often attached to the fuselage structure.

The history of the construction of aircraft fuselages has evolved through the early wood truss structural arrangements to the current metal semi-monocoque shell structures. A majority of aircraft fuselages are fabricated from aluminum alloys and are produced by a process of automatic machining of the skins and stringers (see illustration), with much of the assembly being done by automatic drilling, countersinking, and fastener installation. In some areas, adhesive bonding is used as a means of attaching doublers to reinforce skin panels. In many of the high-performance aircraft, such as fighters and bombers, extensive use is made of titanium and high-strength steel. See Airframe

Boeing 747 fuselage with stringer-stiffened skin supported by frames

McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopedia of Engineering. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

fuselage

The main structure or body of most types of airplanes, to which the wings, tailplane, fin, rudder, and other surfaces are attached. It is the center body of the airplane designed to carry the crew, passengers, and cargo. The fuselage is generally classified according to its construction: truss type, monocoque, etc.

An Illustrated Dictionary of Aviation Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Fuselage

 

in aviation, the body of an aircraft, used to accommodate the crew, passengers, cargo, and equipment; it ties together the wing, empennage, and sometimes the landing gear and power plant. The principal structural elements are a frame and a skin. In truss fuselages, the frame is a three-dimensional truss, and the skin serves to give the fuselage a streamlined shape. In shell-type fuselages, the framework is created by longitudinal elements (longerons and stringers) and transverse elements (ribs); the skin, which provides stiffening, and the frame both take up the load. Composite fuselages may combine a forward section of the truss-type with a shell-type tail, or vice versa.

Supersonic aircraft have the nose section sharply pointed for improved aerodynamics. In some aircraft the empennage is mounted on special beams; in such cases the fuselage is called a gondola. The fuselages of seaplanes are made in the form of a marine hull.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.