How a wing makes lift

A wing tilted slightly into the wind turns the oncoming air downward. Air over the curved top speeds up and its pressure drops, while air underneath slows a little and its pressure rises, so the wing is pushed up. Engineers wrap all of this into one equation: lift equals one half times air density times speed squared times wing area times a lift coefficient that grows with angle of attack.

Controls

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Animation speed

Airspeed

Angle of attack

Altitude

Step through it

The wing sectionA wing is rounded at the front and thin at the back. This slice through it is called an airfoil.
Angle of attackTilting the leading edge up into the airflow turns more air downward. Lift rises roughly in step with the angle at small angles.
Pressure differenceAir flowing over the top speeds up and its pressure drops. The pressure difference across the wing is what actually pushes it up.
Speed squaredDouble the airspeed and lift goes up four times. That is why airplanes need long runways to reach flying speed.
Thin air and stallHigh altitude air is less dense, so the same wing makes less lift. Tilt past about 12 to 15 degrees and the flow separates from the top: a stall.

The lift equation

NASA's standard form is L = 0.5 x rho x V squared x S x CL. Rho is air density, V is airspeed, S is wing area and CL is the lift coefficient. This model uses a 16 square meter wing, about the size of a small four seat airplane.

For CL it uses thin airfoil theory: CL = 2 x pi x angle of attack in radians, for a symmetric section. It is a good teaching approximation for small angles but ignores camber, wingtip losses and stall, so it overestimates lift at the top of the range.

Try it: at 60 m/s and 5 degrees at sea level the wing makes about 19 kN, enough to hold up nearly 2 tonnes. Switch to 10,000 m and lift falls to about 6.5 kN with nothing else changed.

Why both explanations are right

You may hear that lift comes from air pressure, or from the wing throwing air down. Both describe the same flow: the pressure difference on the wing and the downward momentum given to the air are two sides of one force. The animation shows faster flow above and slower flow below.

Where Avid uses this

HydroVzn, Avid's autonomous drone agrobotics platform, flies on rotor blades that are spinning airfoils governed by this same lift equation.

Sources

Lift FormulaNASA Glenn Research Center
AA200 Chapter 11: Two-Dimensional Airfoil TheoryStanford University, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Characteristics of Wing Sections at Subcritical Speeds (von Doenhoff and Loftin)NASA Technical Reports Server

How to cite this model

Avid Solutions International. (2026, November 11). How a wing makes lift [Interactive 3D model]. Avid Field Lab. https://avidsolutionsintl.com/explore/airfoil-lift

Last updated November 11, 2026

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