Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Newman Amir-Aircraft Stability & Control
Newman Amir-Aircraft Stability & Control
Introduction to Aircraft
Stability and Control
Dava J. Newman and Amir R. Amir
7.1
| BASIC NOMENCLATURE
147
148
CHAPTER 7
Figure 7.1
Pitch
y
V
M
CG
U
Roll
x
Yaw
N
L'
A classic airplane has three basic controls: ailerons, elevator, and rudder.
They are designed to change and control the moments about the roll, pitch, and
yaw axes. These control surfaces are flaplike surfaces that can be deflected back
and forth at the command of the pilot.
Figure 4.1 introduced and defined airplane control surfaces. The ailerons are
located at the trailing edge of the wing. Similarly, the elevator is located at the
trailing edge of the horizontal stabilizer, and the rudder is at the trailing edge of
the vertical stabilizer.
A downward deflection of a control surface will increase the lift, since this
makes the airfoil shape of the wing or tail more bent downward (in aeronautical jargon, it has a larger camber) and thus produces more lift. An increase or
decrease of the deflection will change the moment and thus will result in a rotation about an axis.
Rolling. The ailerons control the roll or lateral motion and are therefore
often called the lateral controls.
Aileron down
Aileron up
Roll
L'
Pitching. The elevator controls pitch or the longitudinal motion and thus is
often called the longitudinal control.
SECTION 7.2
Airplane Stability
Elevator up
M
Pitch
Yawing. The rudder controls yaw or the directional motion and thus is
called the directional control.
Rudder deflected
Yaw
7.2
| AIRPLANE STABILITY
There are two types of stability: static stability and dynamic stability.
7.2.1
Static Stability
Static stability can be visualized by a ball (or any object) on a surface. Initially
the ball is in equilibrium. The ball is then displaced from the equilibrium position, and its initial behavior is observed.
Statically unstable. If the forces and moments are such that the body
continues to move away from its equilibrium position after being
disturbed, the body is statically unstable.
149
CHAPTER 7
Neutrally stable. If the body is disturbed but the moments remain zero, the
body stays in equilibrium and is neutrally stable.
Of importance to us are only the first two cases; neutral stability occurs very
rarely. A very important point is that static stability deals only with the initial
tendency of a vehicle to return or diverge from equilibrium.
7.2.2
Dynamic Stability
Dynamic stability deals with the time history of the vehicles motion after it initially responds to its static stability.
Consider an airplane flying at an angle of attack (AOA) ae such that the
moments about the center of gravity (cg) are zero. The aircraft is therefore in equilibrium at ae and is said to be trimmed, and ae is called the trim angle of attack.
Now imagine that a wind gust disturbs the airplane and changes its angle of
attack to some new value a. Hence, the plane was pitched through a displacement a ae. The planes behavior could be as shown in Figure 7.2.
Time
Displacement
Figure 7.2
Displacement
150
Initial
disturbance
Time
SECTION 7.3
Displacement
Figure 7.3
7.3
Time
7.3.1
There is an aerodynamic force created by the pressure (and shear stress1) distribution over the wing surface. The resultant (net) force R can be resolved into two
components: the lift L (perpendicular to the relative wind v) and the drag D (in
the direction of the relative wind v).
7.3.2
Consider just the pressure on the top surface of the wing. The net force due to
that pressure distribution, called F1, points downward and is acting through point
1 on the chord line. The pressure distribution on the bottom surface results in a
net force F2, pointing upward and acting through point 2 on the chord line. The
total aerodynamic force on the wing is of course a summation of F1 and F2. If
F2 F1, there is lift. Since the two forces do not act through the same point,
there will be a net moment on the wing. See Figure 7.4.
Figure 7.4
F2
1. Pressure is the force perpendicular to the surface per unit area, while shear stress is the force
along the surface per unit area. Both have units of pascals (or newtons per meter squared).
151
152
CHAPTER 7
The magnitude of the moment depends upon the reference point about
which the moment is taken. If the moment is taken with respect to the leading
edge, it is denoted by MLE. For subsonic wings it is often customary to take the
moment about the quarter-chord point (i.e, the point that is a distance c/4 away
from the leading edge). This moment is denoted by Mc/4.
Both MLE and Mc/4 vary with the angle of attack. However, a special point
exists about which the moment essentially does not vary with a. This point is
called the aerodynamic center (ac). For that point,
Mac constant 1independent of angle of attack2
[7.1]
Mac
qq Sc
[7.2]
where q is the dynamic pressure, S the wing area, and c the chord length. (Recall
the definition of the coefficient of lift and drag from Chapter 3, Aerodynamics.)
The value of CM, ac is zero for symmetric airfoils and varies from 0.02 to
0.3 or so for cambered airfoils.
7.3.3
Moment on an Aircraft
Figure 7.5
Lwing
Ltail
Mac
T
D
e
ac
W
Mcg = 0
SECTION 7.4
An airplane is in pitch equilibrium when the net moment about the center of
gravity is zero.
Mcg CM, cg 0
airplane is trimmed
[7.4]
Note that while drag plays an essential part in performance determination, its
role is small for stability and control. Its value is much less than that of the lift,
and its acts not too far from the center of gravity, so its effects are often neglected.
7.4
| ATTAINING AIRCRAFT
Static stability and control about all three axes is necessary in the design of conventional airplanes. However, a complete description of lateral, longitudinal, and
directional stability is difficult. We will focus on longitudinal motion (pitching
motion about the y axis), which is the most important.
Consider an airplane with fixed control surfaces. Wind tunnel testing may
reveal the following behavior (see Figure 7.6): The plot is almost linear and
shows the value of the CM, cg versus angle of attack a. The slope of the curve is
CM, cg/a, and is sometimes denoted with the letter a. (A partial derivative rather
than a total derivative is used since the coefficient does not depend on a alone.)
The value of CM, cg at an angle of attack equal to zero is denoted by CM, 0. The angle
at which the moment coefficient is zero is, of course, the trim angle of attack.
Figure 7.6 | The moment coefficient about the center of gravity as
a function of angle of attack for a longitudinally stable aircraft.
CM,CG
(+)
CM,0
()
Slope=
Trimmed
CM,cg
If the airplane is flying at its trim angle of attack ae and suddenly encounters a disturbance that causes it to pitch up or down (e.g., due to a wind gust),
the moment will be such that the plane will return to its equilibrium position. To
see that, imagine a wind gust pitching the plane up from ae to some larger a. By
looking at the plot in Fig. 7.6, you can see that the moment coefficient (and
hence the moment) will be negative, which makes the plane pitch down and return
to equilibrium.
153
154
CHAPTER 7
Suppose the curve of CM, cg versus a is as shown in Figure 7.7. The plane
would be unstable, as you can verify yourself. Thus, we can state the necessary
criteria for longitudinal static stability and balance as
0CM,cg
6 0
and
CM,0 7 0
0a
[7.5]
CM,cg
Trimmed
(+)
()
CM,0
That is, the slope of the moment coefficient curve versus angle of attack has to be
negative, and the moment coefficient at zero angle of attack has to be positive.
An airplane can fly trough a range of angles of attack, but ae must be within
this range, or else the plane cannot be trimmed. If the aircraft can be trimmed, it
is said to be longitudinally balanced.
We can now answer the question, Why do airplanes have horizontal stabilizers? If you have a wing by itself, it will usually have a negative CM, ac and thus
a negative CM, 0 (this is characteristic of all airfoils with positive camber). Therefore a wing by itself is unbalanced. To correct the situation, a horizontal stabilizer is mounted behind the wing. If the wing is inclined downward to produce
a negative lift, then a clockwise moment about the cg will be created. If this
clockwise moment is large enough, it will overcome the negative CM, 0 for the
wing-tail combination, making the aircraft as a whole longitudinally balanced.
The horizontal stabilizer does not have to be placed behind the wing. If it is
in front of the wing, it is called a canard configuration.
7.5
| USEFUL CALCULATIONS
AND AN EXAMPLE
First consider the tail (horizontal stabilizer) by itself, as shown in Fig. 7.8. Since
the tail is behind the wing, it feels two interference effects:
1. The airflow arriving at the tail does not have the same direction as that
arriving at the wing, since the wing deflects the airflow downward due to
SECTION 7.5
Figure 7.8
155
| Forces acting on the tail and relative wind seen by the tail [33].
the downwash effect (an effect due to the finite length of the wings).
Hence, the relative wind of the wing and tail makes up an angle .
2. Due to skin friction and pressure drag, the magnitude of the relative wind
seen by the tail is smaller than the magnitude of the relative wind seen by
the wing.
Now consider an idealized wing-tail configuration in steady, level flight
such as shown in Figure 7.9. The wing and the tail are set at incidence angles iw
and it, respectively, with respect to the longitudinal aircraft axis. The relative
wind V comes in at an angle aw with respect to the wing. The relative wind V
comes in at an angle at with respect to the tail.
Figure 7.9
Lw
Lt
Dw
Dt
cg
iw
it
t
V'
V
xa
lt
156
CHAPTER 7
[7.6]
where is the downwash. Its value can be computed from the following equation:
e e a aw
[7.7]
[7.8]
When the airplane is trimmed, the moments about the cg are zero. From this
we can find the trim condition. The coefficients of lift for the wing and for the
tail and the angle of attack can be defined as the product of the slope of the
moment coefficient.
CL,w a wa w
[7.9]
CL,t a t 3a w 11 e a 2 i t iw 4
[7.10]
After several steps and a few simplifying assumptions, the trim condition can be
CM,cg
CM,ac
At l t a t
xa
At lt a t
c
11 e a 2 d a w c
1i i t 2 d 0
aw
c
a
Aw ca w
A wca w w
w
[7.11]
The first term in brackets is the sensitivity to the angle of attack. Consider again
the situation where a wind gust disturbs a plane flying in trim and causes it to
pitch up. For the plane to be stable, the moment coefficient CM, cg (which was
0) has to be negative in order for the plane to pitch down. For stability we can
then write
0CM,cg
6 0
0a
or
xa
At lt at
6
11 ea 2
c
Aw caw
[7.12]
In designing your LTA vehicle, you can place the cg (and thus set the value
of xa) such that the vehicle is stable, using the above inequality. In the limiting
case, when the cg is as far back as possible,
a
xa
At lt a t
b
11 e a 2
c max A wca w
[7.13]
[7.14]
SECTION 7.5
An animation was created to help you visualize airplane pitch stability and
control. Run the animation to become familiar with the governing equations and
to see the results of moments on the airplane resulting in stability and instability. Now that you have seen an airplane in motion, Example 7.1 provides additional practice in calculating airplane stability parameters.
157
EXAMPLE 7.1
This numeric example illustrates the use of the equations presented. Consider a light
aircraft with the following characteristics:
Aw 15 m2, c 1.6 m.
aw 5 rad1, at rad1.
mg
1
rV 2Aw
2
11,0502 19.82
0.549
[7.15]
CL,w
aw
0.546
0.11 rad 6.3
5
[7.16]
[7.17]
[7.18]
Question 2. Suppose that the cg is placed halfway between the ac and the neutral
point, that is, xa 0.21 m and xa/c 0.132. What is the angle of attack of the tail
and the lift produced by the tail?
First the difference between the wing and tail incidence angles needs to be
computed:
1aw 2 trim 0.11
[7.19]
[7.20]
158
CHAPTER 7
PROBLEMS
7.1
7.2
7.3
Vertical
A
B
Problems
(a) Given the above definition of stability, which of the above systems is
in a stable equilibrium?
(b) Sketch the evolution of the angle u(t) between the segment AB and
the vertical as a function of time following a brief perturbation for
the two systems in the figures above. Justify your answer to part (a).
(c) Now consider the two pendulums immersed in a vat of honey!
Sketch u(t) for the two systems. How does it differ from your answer
to part (b)? Suggest a physical explanation for this difference.
A block diagram is a graphical representation of a system (a model or an
equation). The following conventions are used:
7.4
t
+
159
160
CHAPTER 7
x
+