Is there a limit to how large an airplane wing can be? There are some agreeably large planes out there, like the C-5 Super Galaxy. But how big can these planes' wings really get?
The heavier the plane, it is usually larger, and with size of the fuselage comes size in the wings (most of the time). But is there a limit to how big you can make your wings?
If you make your wings so big that they're 6 feet thick and an absurd length long, say, for a colossal plane, will those wings provide enough lift? I mean, if the wing gets that big, It not only has to lift the plane, but its own weight then becomes a concern. But, with that weight comes the size. Another issue, is how the aerodynamics work on such a crazy big plane.
The thicker the wing, the more air is contacting the wing. This causes more resistance on the wing at a given chunk than a smaller wing. The question comes from seeing several shows that depict planes so large they're like flying cities, and it just doesn't look realistic to me, the sheer size of those planes.
No, there is no theoretical limit to the size of a wing. You could make a wing big enough to lift the entire Earth (assuming, of course, you somehow had an atmosphere to fly it in).
There are, of course, many practical limitations to wing size. The lift a wing develops is proportional to the square of the scale of the wing, all else being equal. However, the weight of the wing (and the rest of the airplane it's attached to, for that matter) is proportional to the cube of the scale. So, if you double a plane's size, the lift developed by the wings goes up four times, but the weight goes up eight times. So, in that case, the wings would need to be even larger compared to the plane in order to lift the added weight. This is referred to as The Square-Cube Law (Wikipedia, Aerospace Research Central, TVTropes). You eventually reach a point where there are no materials strong enough to withstand the stresses imposed on such a massive wing.