Bjorn’s Corner: Pitch stability

November 23, 2018, ©. DOWNLOAD

Leeham News: In the
spring I ran a series of Corners which
dealt with aircraft stability on a basic level
(April 13 to June 8). It covered the
aircraft’s basic stability modes in normal
flight and described the basic helper
By Bjorn Fehrm
systems one finds on aircraft, such as yaw
dampers and autopilots. But we did not
go deeper into aircraft stability problems and more advanced
helper systems.

Given recent events, it can be interesting to dive a bit deeper

into the pitch stability of an aircraft and common helper
systems.
 Figure 1. The Boeing MAX 8 which introduced the MCAS system to help

with pitch stability. Source: Boeing.

Pitch stability fundamentals

An aircraft’s airfoil is characterized by the air’s pressure

distribution around the airfoil when the air flows past it.

Figure 2 shows two different types of airfoils, one conventional

and one supercritical airfoil. The conventional is an often used
historical airfoil and the latter the type of airfoils used in airliners
flying today. The supercritical one has a different shape and
therefore a different pressure distribution.

By curving less abruptly in the first part of the airfoil, the under
pressure compared to ambient air (observe the Y-axis has the
lower pressure at the top) is kept at a lower value than for the
conventional airfoil and therefore it speeds up the air less
passing over the airfoil. This gives it better high Mach
characteristics.
 Figure 2. A conventional and supercritical airfoil and their pressure
distributions. Source: Embraer.

We can also see the two airfoils have very different lift
distributions over the chord of the airfoils (chord= the length
axis of the airfoil). If we sum the pressures on the top and
bottom sides (the top and bottom curves for both airfoils) we get
different moments on the airfoils should we pivot them at half
chord length. The conventional airfoil would like to pitch up and
the supercritical pitch down.

Airfoils are characterized by their lift characteristics but also how

their pitch moments vary when flown with a different angle of
attack against the airstream. Figure 3 shows a typical lift force
(here characterized by the lift coefficient Cl curve) versus angle
of attack curve for an airfoil or aircraft wing.
 Figure 3. Lift coefficient versus angle of attack curve. Source: Wikipedia.

At high angles of attack, caused by low speed or a high aircraft

load factor, the wing flies closer to stall = maximum lift. Before
reaching stall most wings start to shake from a partially
separated flow. This is called buffeting.

When an airfoil or wing is characterized by CFD tools (Computer

Fluid Dynamics programs) and later tested in wind tunnels, the
lift curve but also the pitch moment curve is measured. Figure 4
shows a generalized pitch moment curve for two different
airfoils or straight wings using such airfoils (the pitch moment is
shown by the pitch moment coefficient Cm).
 Figure 4. Generalized pitch moment curve versus Alpha for airfoils/wings.

Source: Wikipedia and Leeham Co.

A flying wing will move in pitch around its Center of Gravity. The
red wing is called pitch stable as any increase of Alpha from for
example a gust would increase the lift (Figure 3) and at the same
time increase the pitch down moment of the wing, Figure 4. This
returns the wing to a lower Alpha. The wing is correcting the
gust disturbance by itself.

The blue wing, on the contrary, will pitch up when hit by a gust
which increases Alpha . This increases the Alpha further, which
increases the pitch up moment, which….. This wing is unstable, it
would ultimately flip over backwards.

Next Corner

We have now covered the basics around lift and pitch stability
for a wing. In the next Corner, we start building an aircraft and
look at its pitch stability.
 Share this:

 Print  Email  Twitter  Google  Pinterest  LinkedIn

 Tumblr  Facebook 2  Reddit

Related

Bjorn’s Corner: Bjorn’s Corner: Flight Bjorn’s Corner: Pitch

Aircraft stability control, Part 3 stability, Part 3
April 13, 2018 March 25, 2016 December 7, 2018
In "Bjorn's Corner" In "Airbus" In "Bjorn's Corner"

# Category: Bjorn's Corner $ Tags: Aircraft stability, Pitch stability

← Delta orders more A330-900, pushes out A350-900

Pontifications: Transitions, clearing the decks and turmoil at Airbus →

Copyright © 2018 · All Rights Reserved · Leeham News and Comment

Sitemap · RSS Feed · Log in ! "