I plan to have dragons in my fantasy setting and wanted to figure out just how much force their wings would need to generate in order for them to fly.
Rules for dragons in this setting:
- Dragons, and other large flying creatures have stronger bones, muscles and skin to enable them to fly granted to them by a wide variety of conditions that varies from species to species.
- The only magic dragons have naturally is their breath attacks in some dragon species. They do not use magic to fly.
- While dragons are capable of flight from a young age, adult dragons are not very agile in the air and prefer to fight on the ground. Younger dragons will have agility that diminishes as they grow.
- We'll be setting aside the usual problems of the square cube law for things like heat regulation and metabolism since this is a fantasy setting.
I'm just looking at the amount of force their wings would need to produce in order to fly so that I can determine how much force they could exert if they tried to flap their wings to create a directed air blast to topple foes and possibly weak buildings.
Image Source: D&D Monster manual (3rd edition)
For reference, this is what I was considering for a full grown dragon in my setting at least in terms of body plan and proportions. Without any measurements of the reference image, I'm going to fall back on what one of the D&D books describe for a large dragon. 2700 pounds and a 45-50 foot wingspan will be the average.
With all of that out of the way, how much force would a dragon of about that weight and wingspan need to fly? And how much of it could they direct in front of them as an attack? Would it topple humanoid foes or just kill them? Could it wreck some buildings and fortifications?