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Air brake (aircraft)
 
 
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In aeronautics
Aeronautics

File:An-225 Mriya.jpgFile:Atlantis on Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.jpgFile:Typhoon f2 zj910 arp.jpgAeronautics is the science involved with the study, design, and manufacture of flight-capable machines, or the techniques of operating aircraft....
, air brakes are a type of flight control
Flight controls

Aircraft flight control surfaces allow a pilot to adjust and control the aircraft's flight attitude.Development of an effective set of flight controls was a critical advance in the development of the aircraft....
 used on an aircraft
Aircraft

An aircraft is a vehicle which is able to flight by being supported by the air, or in general, the atmosphere, of a planet. Examples include balloons, airplanes and helicopters....
 to reduce speed during landing.

Air brakes differ from spoilers
Spoiler (aeronautics)

In aeronautics a spoiler is a device intended to reduce lift in an aircraft. Spoilers are plates on the top surface of a wing which can be extended upward into the airflow and spoil it....
 in that air brakes are designed to increase drag
Drag (physics)

The term drag is widely used in Physics and Engineering and is central to the field of fluid dynamics. "Drag" refers to forces that oppose the motion of a solid object through a fluid ....
 while making little change to lift
Lift (force)

In the context of a fluid flow relative to a body, the lift force is the Vector #Vector components of the aerodynamic force that is perpendicular to the oncoming flow direction....
, whereas spoilers greatly reduce the lift-to-drag ratio and a higher angle of attack required to maintain lift, resulting in a higher stall speed.

Often, characteristics of both spoilers and airbrakes are desirable and are combined - most modern airliner
Airliner

An airliner is a large fixed-wing aircraft with the primary function of transporting paying passengers and carrying cargo. Such planes are owned by airlines....
 jets feature combined spoiler and airbrake controls.






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Buccaneer Airbrake
In aeronautics
Aeronautics

File:An-225 Mriya.jpgFile:Atlantis on Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.jpgFile:Typhoon f2 zj910 arp.jpgAeronautics is the science involved with the study, design, and manufacture of flight-capable machines, or the techniques of operating aircraft....
, air brakes are a type of flight control
Flight controls

Aircraft flight control surfaces allow a pilot to adjust and control the aircraft's flight attitude.Development of an effective set of flight controls was a critical advance in the development of the aircraft....
 used on an aircraft
Aircraft

An aircraft is a vehicle which is able to flight by being supported by the air, or in general, the atmosphere, of a planet. Examples include balloons, airplanes and helicopters....
 to reduce speed during landing.

Air brakes differ from spoilers
Spoiler (aeronautics)

In aeronautics a spoiler is a device intended to reduce lift in an aircraft. Spoilers are plates on the top surface of a wing which can be extended upward into the airflow and spoil it....
 in that air brakes are designed to increase drag
Drag (physics)

The term drag is widely used in Physics and Engineering and is central to the field of fluid dynamics. "Drag" refers to forces that oppose the motion of a solid object through a fluid ....
 while making little change to lift
Lift (force)

In the context of a fluid flow relative to a body, the lift force is the Vector #Vector components of the aerodynamic force that is perpendicular to the oncoming flow direction....
, whereas spoilers greatly reduce the lift-to-drag ratio and a higher angle of attack required to maintain lift, resulting in a higher stall speed.

Often, characteristics of both spoilers and airbrakes are desirable and are combined - most modern airliner
Airliner

An airliner is a large fixed-wing aircraft with the primary function of transporting paying passengers and carrying cargo. Such planes are owned by airlines....
 jets feature combined spoiler and airbrake controls. On landing, the deployment of these spoilers causes a dramatic loss of lift and hence the weight of the aircraft is transferred from the wings to the undercarriage, allowing the wheels to be mechanically braked with much less chance of skidding. In addition, the form drag created by the spoilers directly assists the braking effect. Reverse thrust is also used to help slow the aircraft after landing.

The British Blackburn Buccaneer
Blackburn Buccaneer

The Blackburn Buccaneer was a United Kingdom low level strike aircraft serving with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. Designed and initially produced by Blackburn Aircraft it was later known as the Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer when Blackburn became a part of the Hawker Siddeley group....
 naval strike aircraft designed in the 1950s had a tail cone that was split and could be hydraulically opened to the sides to act as a variable air brake. It also helped to reduce the length of the aircraft in the confined space on an aircraft carrier.

The F-15 Eagle
F-15 Eagle

The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is a twin-engine, all-weather military tactics fighter aircraft designed to gain and maintain air superiority in aerial combat....
 and the Sukhoi Su-30 have an airbrake just behind the cockpit, as do the other members of the Flanker family.

Split control surfaces


The deceleron
Deceleron

A deceleron is a type of aileron, developed in the late 1940s by Northrop originally for use on the F-89 Scorpion fighter aircraft. It is a two-part aileron that can be deflected as a unit to provide roll control, or split open to act as an air brake ....
 is an aileron
Aileron

For the band with a similar name, see The AileronsAilerons are hinged control surfaces attached to the trailing edge of the wing of a fixed-wing aircraft....
 that functions normally in flight but can split in half such that the top half goes up as the bottom half goes down to brake. This technique was first used on the F-89 Scorpion
F-89 Scorpion

The Northrop F-89 Scorpion was an early American turbojet all-weather interceptor aircraft. It has the distinction of being the first combat aircraft armed with nuclear weapons, for air-to-air use....
 and has since been used by Northrop on several aircraft, including the B-2 Spirit
B-2 Spirit

The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit is a multirole heavy bomber with "low observable" stealth aircraft technology capable of penetration dense anti-aircraft warfare to deploy both conventional weapons and nuclear weapon weapons....
.

The space shuttle
Space Shuttle

NASA's Space Shuttle, officially called the Space Transportation System , is the spacecraft currently used by the United States government for its human spaceflight missions....
 uses a similar system. The split rudder opens on landing to act as a speedbrake , as shown in the accompanying photo. The Bugatti Veyron
Bugatti Veyron

The Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4 is a mid-engine design Grand tourer car produced by Volkswagen Group subsidiary Bugatti Automobiles SAS and was introduced in 2005 as the fastest production car in the world....
 car uses an airbrake in the form of a deployable spoiler.

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