The Physics of Paragliding

 

What is Paragliding? - The Physics of a Wing - The Physics of Thermals - The Physics of Maneurvering a Paraglider - Resources Used

What is Paragliding?

History:

Paragliding is the sport of free, unpowered flight, through the use of an inflatable fabric canopy. It's roots can be traced to the invention of the ram air parachute in the mid 1960's by Domina Jalbert. However the creation of paragliding is most often traced to David Barish, a NASA employee, in 1965. From this point on the sport continued to grow slowly in the United States, however it started to grow explosively in Europe. This explosive growth led to the creation of several regulatory agencies (A German agency: DHV and an American one: USPHA). These agencies would test glider wings before they were released to the public to determine if they had any undesirable flight characteristics, such as unexpectedly folding up during flight. Paragliding continues to grow around the world, as people realize the freedom that it grants them.

 

Basic Parts of a Paraglider:

There are three essential parts of a paraglider.

• The first of these, and probably the most obvious is the wing. The wing, as seen as a blue crescent in the background of this page, is the object that allows a paraglider to remain in the air. Although it is normally flexible, when inflated from forward air pressure, it becomes a relatively rigid wing. This is where most of the interesting physics happens

• The second of these are the lines. These can be seen as the multicolored lines running from the wing to the hanging person below. These lines are most often divided into 5 separate categories, A lines, B lines, C lines, D lines and brake lines. The A lines are connected to the leading edge of the paraglider, B lines to the front mid part, C lines to the back mid, D lines to the trailing edge and brake lines to both the right rear and left rear corners of the paraglider. The A,B,C and D lines are used mainly for supporting the pilot from the wing, whereas the brake lines are used mainly for control purposes.

• The third of these is the harness. The harness's job is to support the pilot from the wing and transfer his weight shifts into canopy distortions. These distortions can then be used to assist in the maneurvering of the glider. Another very important duty of the harness is back protection in case of a hard landing. This protection can be seen as the large bulge on the pilots back