Neutral Stability And Neutral Stability

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Neutral stability and relaxed stability analysis: advantages and disadvantages. A neutrally stable airplane has the following characteristics: 1) there is only one elevator trim displacement that gives a steady flight speed. If we slightly increase the up trim, the aircraft will progressively pitch up until it stalls. Adding a little amount of down trim, the aircraft will move into an ever-steepening dive. 2) If this particular trimming setting is held, the aircraft is able to be still in trim at any airspeed. In addition the trimmed operating speed depends completely on the history of elevator control inputs, not on the trim setting. Hence, after shifting pitching attitude, a neutrally stable aircraft does not spontaneously revert to its precedent airspeed. [NOTE: The FAA would not certify an aircraft that did not have positive static and dynamic stability!!] Case of MD11: neutrally stable civil aircraft [AS2]. 1. The MD-11 was designed with a smaller horizontal stabilizer than other airliners. That, plus the shifting of its centre of gravity further aft, all to reduce drag and thus fuel burn, causes it to be unusually light on the controls. That design, known as “relaxed stability,” is common to fighter planes but is not normally found in the pitch axis of a civilian airliner. The MD-11 uses computers to provide neutral speed stability. In other words, the CG of the MD-11 appears to be at the neutral point. The MD-11 uses elevator deflection to hold attitude at any speed within the normal flight envelope, then trims the stabilizer. This is known as an "attitude hold" system. The computer (LSAS) is used to compensate for neutral stability. The CG is indeed moved aft in cruise, but the LSAS makes it stable. 2. Some well-kn... ... middle of paper ... ...to a very dangerous flight situations. Such issues make really unrealistic adopting such configuration for any civil aircraft without any specific countermeasure. Indeed, the rectification of these stability and control deficiencies and the provision of adequate flying qualities will require a very high authority augmentation system. Thus, a multiple-redundant command augmentation system must be implemented to make a neutral or slightly negatively permanent flying setting even only conceivable. [AS1]Ref: Roger H. Hoh, David G. Mitchell, Flying Qualities of Relaxed Static Stability Aircraft- Volume 1 and 2, US department of transportation, 1982 [AS3]Ref: Aircraft pitch-axis stability and command augmentation system,US 6325333 B1, [AS2]Ref: http://airlinesafety.com/faq/faq9.htm [asbook]Daniel P.Raymer,Aircraft Design:A conceptual approach,AIAA education series,2006

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