Analysis
Near the cruise condition most of the lift force is generated by the wings, with ideally only a small amount generated by the fuselage and tail. We may analyse the longitudinal static stability by considering the aircraft in equilibrium under wing lift, tail force, and weight. The moment equilibrium condition is called trim, and we are generally interested in the longitudinal stability of the aircraft about this trim condition.
Equating forces in the vertical direction:
where W is the weight, is the wing lift and is the tail force.
For a symmetrical airfoil at low angle of attack, the wing lift is proportional to the angle of attack:
where is the wing area is the (wing) lift coefficient, is the angle of attack. The term is included to account for camber, which results in lift at zero angle of attack. Finally is the dynamic pressure:
where is the air density and is the speed.
Read more about this topic: Longitudinal Static Stability
Famous quotes containing the word analysis:
“A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)