Preliminary Results on Wing Rock Dynamics due to

Aerodynamic Hysteresis
Go Tiauw Hiong*
Fidelis Adhika Pradipta Lie†
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore 639798

Abstract
Wing rock is an undesirable dynamic phenomenon that has not been fully
understood. A possible cause of wing rock is aerodynamic hysteresis, which
has been observed at high angles-of-attack flight. This paper discusses the
wing rock dynamic characteristics due to such hysteresis. A simple hysteresis
model is utilized and the effects of the hysteresis parameters on wing rock
properties are presented. An analytical approximation to the solution is also
developed and the accuracy of the results is compared with the numerical
solutions. The analytical solution is very useful to get clear interrelationship of
the important parameters affecting the overall dynamics.

I. Introduction
Enhanced maneuverability requirement on modern day fighter aircraft pushes the flight
envelope into the relatively unfamiliar flight regime, such as flight at high angles-of-attack. With
the venture into such flight regime, phenomena that needed no consideration in the past become
must-to-take-into-account behaviors. An example of such phenomenon is wing rock, which is
uncommanded roll-dominated oscillations that aircraft can experience in high angle-of-attack
flight. Wing rock could severely limit the maneuver performance of an aircraft and could even
lead to catastrophic consequences. It is a nonlinear phenomenon that mathematically manifests
itself as a limit cycle type of oscillations.1-3 The degree of severity of wing rock is determined
mainly by the amplitude of the motion and to a lesser extent by its frequency.
There are several possible causes of wing rock. Experimental results using free-to-roll delta
wing indicate that wing rock can be triggered by flow asymmetries, developed by negative roll
damping, and sustained by nonlinear roll damping properties.4 In agreement with those results,
several analyses utilizing roll-only degree-of-freedom show that the onset of wing rock limit
cycle occurs at the loss of dynamic roll damping derivative and its amplitude is determined by
the nonlinear rolling moment variation.5,6 Nayfeh et al.7,8 employ an analytical approach utilizing
the Multiple Time Scales (MTS) method to study the effect of the cubic variation of the lateral
moment coefficient with angle of sideslip on the single degree-of-freedom wing rock motion.
Later, Go and Ramnath1-3 extend such analytical approach to the higher degree-of-freedom wing
rock cases, by employing a combination of MTS method with center manifold technique and

*
Assistant Professor, Division of Aerospace Engineering
†
Research student