AE 451 Aeronautical Engineering Design

STUDY 9
LONGITUDINAL STABILITY ANALYSIS

Yaroslav Novikov Ender Ozyetis Emre Unay Denizhan Yavas

28/12/2009

Middle East Technical University Aerospace Engineering Department

ABSTRACT
This report presents all the work and calculations that were necessary to complete Study 9. Longitudinal analysis performed in this study proves that our aircraft is stable for all configurations which are to be described in the following pages of this report.

INTRODUCTION
Reader is first introduced to the calculation of neutral point of the whole aircraft. Static margin is then determined for 4 different configurations for which the centre of gravity location is of great importance.

NEUTRAL POINT
Position of the neutral has been calculated using the following relations (neglecting engine contribution):

Here,

In these formulations, at and awb are lift curve slopes for the horizontal tail and wing-body, respectively. Lift curve slope for wing-body is assumed to be equal to wings lift curve slope, and both slopes are calculated using airfoil data through the following relation:

Lift curve slope for the wing was calculated in a previous study as 5,8959. F is the fuselage contribution factor, and was computed in a previous study for the wing. This factor is taken as unity for the horizontal tail. Leading edge sweep angle, , for the horizontal tail is 10,631 degrees. Lift curve slope can be obtained from airfoil data as 6,3025. Aspect ratio is 3,5 with a horizontal tail planform and exposed area of 6,3 m2 and volume ratio of 0,65. Substituting all numerical values for a flight at 0,3 Mach, the lift curve slope for the horizontal tail can be calculated as:

Downwash factor is calculated using the following formula:

A is the wings aspect ratio (6,68), stands for the wing taper ratio (0,544), hH and lH are the vertical (2,38 m) and horizontal (7,408 m) distances between wings and horizontal tails MACs, respectively. is the quarter-chord line sweep of the wing, and is a negative value for our design. Substituting all numerical values,

Then,

Static Margin CG location from the leading edge of the wing is calculated from known CG position and location of wing MAC from datum (3,128 meters). Then, the static margin for different configurations of the airplane can be calculated for the empty fuel tank case as follows: Fully Occupied Configuration

Partially Occupied (Pilots & 2 last seat rows)

Empty Configuration

Air Ambulance Configuration

In these equations 2,308 represents the MAC length.

Ideally, the neutral point must be between 5-10% of MAC length. It is clear that this is fully satisfied for all configurations, except for slight over-stability for empty configuration for which the static margin is almost %16. However, this is an acceptable value. Reader should be reminded that these values have been computed for empty fuel tank case. Fuel tanks are to be positioned such that their center of gravity coincides with the center of gravity of the aircraft in fully occupied commuter configuration. This means that with completely full tanks longitudinal center of gravity location will remain the same as for the empty tank case. Static margins for the 4 configurations with completely full fuel tanks can be calculated as follows: Partially Occupied (Pilots & 2 last seat rows)

Empty Configuration

Air Ambulance Configuration

The following table summarizes all that we have done so far.

Empty Fuel Tanks

X CG Location Fully Occupied Ambulance Configuration Partially Occupied Empty Configuration 4,07 4,1 4,16 3,91 Y CG Location 1,38 1,41 1,43 1,48 Static Margin %8,94 %7,4 %5,3 %15,8 X CG Location 3,99 4,01 4,05 3,83

Full Fuel Tanks

Y CG Location 1,52 1,55 1,58 1,64 Static Margin %12,73 %11,57 %10,1 %19,3

In fully occupied configuration there are 8 people on board plus 2 pilots. Ambulance configuration assumes that all 4 stretchers are occupied by patients, and 4 th seat row is taken by the medical team, plus 2 pilots. Partially occupied configuration assumes that only last two rows of seats are completely occupied by passengers, plus 2 pilots. This is not a very much realistic configuration, since people are eager and will want to occupy fronts seats to see what is happening inside the pilot cockpit. Empty configuration has only 2 pilots on board.