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Directional Stability

1. An aircraft's lateral motion involves sideslip, yaw, and roll, and the strength of each defines its dynamic stability type. 2. Directional stability refers to an aircraft's tendency to align itself with the relative wind, while lateral stability involves its tendency to return to wings-level flight after a disturbance. 3. Without adequate stability, an aircraft can enter dangerous spiraling dives or oscillating Dutch rolls. Modern jets use automatic yaw and roll dampers to correct for these tendencies and ensure stability.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
80 views13 pages

Directional Stability

1. An aircraft's lateral motion involves sideslip, yaw, and roll, and the strength of each defines its dynamic stability type. 2. Directional stability refers to an aircraft's tendency to align itself with the relative wind, while lateral stability involves its tendency to return to wings-level flight after a disturbance. 3. Without adequate stability, an aircraft can enter dangerous spiraling dives or oscillating Dutch rolls. Modern jets use automatic yaw and roll dampers to correct for these tendencies and ensure stability.

Uploaded by

Khalid Hasan
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Directional Stability

Directional Stability
• The lateral motion of an aircraft is made up of
three simultaneous components: sideslip, yaw
and roll.
• Their strength defines the type of dynamic stability.
• Sideslip: Effects due to sideslip can cause:
• Yawing moment–May cause spiral instability.
• Rolling moment–May cause Dutch roll.
• Rolling: bank angle is quickly damped by the
differential lift :
➢ The down-going (gain lift) and the up-going wing (lose
Lift).
• Spiral: A gradually tightening spiral motion.
➢ Caused by greater directional stabilization.
• Dutch Roll: An oscillatory motion having a short
periodic time that involves roll, yaw and sideslip.
➢ Caused by greater lateral stabilization.
Effects of Asymmetric Thrust

• In the event of an engine failure:


• thrust available decreases, and
• the total drag on the failed engine increases.
• This may cause one wing tip to stall until it enters a
spiral descent or a spin.
• It yaws towards the failed engine results.
• It will sideslip away from the failed engine;
• Both effects will roll it towards the failed engine.
• Stop the yaw. Effect to stop the
yaw becomes difficult on Take-off
and Landing speeds
Tendency to spiral dive
• Spiral instability occurs when the directional stability of an airplane is strong
and the lateral stability is weak.
• If this spiral instability left uncorrected, the airplane will enter a steadily spiral
dive.
• speed increases,
• roll increases,
• pitch decreases
• It results in a descent,
and altitude is lost.
Dutch Roll
• Dutch roll occurs with a weak directional stability vs strong lateral stability.

• Hence, “dihedral effect”


corrects to wings level
• But the weathercock effect fails
to turn into the sideslip (and
may even turn away).

• Thus the aircraft wallows (roll


from side to side).
The sequence of events:
• The secondary effect of yaw is roll.
• This occurs because, (for example) with a yaw to the left, the left wing effectively
slows down (less lift), whilst the right wing speeds up (more lift), causing a roll to the
left.
• But for a swept wing, more secondary effect obtained due to a change in effective
aspect ratio (and Lift).
• This reduces the tendency of the wings to dampen the rolling motion, which then
leads to sideslip and a greater bank angle results.
With the greater lift, the rising
wing also increases drag (Di).
• This will yaw the aircraft in the
opposite direction, reversing
the coupled oscillations,
• This produces a yaw to right,
now the left wing developing
more lift and reversing the
direction of the roll.
• The airplane therefore wallows.
Yaw Dampers
• Because it is difficult to manually counteract Dutch
roll, modern jet transport airplanes have an automatic
system, Yaw Dampers.
• This electrohydraulic system has sensor, computer and
servo to control the rudder.
• The unintentional yaw is corrected before the motion
becomes oscillatory.
• If the Yaw Damper fails in flight, the pilot:
• Should use the ailerons to damp-out Dutch roll.
• Because of the response lag, if the pilot uses the
rudder, pilot induced oscillation (PIO) will result and
the Dutch roll may very quickly become divergent,
leading to loss of control.
• Should decrease the altitude and speed and this
will have the desired effect.
Roll Dampers
• Roll-damper system senses an unintentional
rolling motion.
• It corrects by operating the ailerons or an
asymmetric spoiler to perform the correction.
• They are installed if design sensitivity of Spiral
dive exists.
• They can also assist to mitigate dutch-roll cycle.
Effects of Altitude on dynamic stability
• With increasing altitude, aerodynamic damping
decreases due to the reduction in the density of the
air.
• The damping moment is proportional to dynamic
pressure and inversely proportional to TAS.
• in pitch, provided by the tail-plane
• in yaw, provided by the fin for directional stability
• in roll, by the differential lift caused by the upgoing and
downgoing wings.

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