Fundamentals of Airplane Flight Mechanics

Descripción

Flight mechanics is the application of Newton’s laws (F=ma and M=I) to the study of vehicle trajectories (performance), stability, and aerodynamic control. There are two basic problems in airplane flight mechanics: (1) given an airplane what are its performance, stability, and control characteristics? and (2) given performance, stability, and control characteristics, what is the airplane? The latter is called airplane sizing and is based on the definition of a standard mission profile. For commercial airplanes including business jets, the mission legs are take-off, climb, cruise, descent, and landing. For a military airplane additional legs are the supersonic dash, fuel for air combat, and specific excess power. This text is concerned with the first problem, but its organization is motivated by the structure of the second problem. Trajectory analysis is used to derive formulas and/or algorithms for computing the distance, time, and fuel along each mission leg. In the sizing process, all airplanes are required to be statically stable. While dynamic stability is not required in the sizing process, the linearized equations of motion are used in the design of automatic flight control systems. This text is primarily concerned with analytical solutions of airplane flight mechanics problems. Its design is based on the precepts that there is only one semester available for the teaching of airplane flight mechanics and that it is important to cover both trajectory analysis and stability and control in this course. To include the fundamentals of both topics, the text is limited mainly to flight in a vertical plane. This is not very restrictive because, with the exception of turns, the basic trajectory segments of both mission profiles and the stability calculations are in the vertical plane. At the University of Texas at Austin, this course is preceded by courses on low-speed aerodynamics and linear system theory. It is followed by a course on automatic control.

Detalles

Otros Libros de "aviación"