Topic

 

Flight Dynamics

Flight dynamics is the study of the performance, stability, and control of vehicles flying through the air or in outer space.It is concerned with how forces acting on the vehicle determine its velocity and attitude with respect to time.

For a fixed-wing aircraft, its changing orientation with respect to the local air flow is represented by two critical angles, the angle of attack of the wing ("alpha") and the angle of attack of the vertical tail, known as the sideslip angle ("beta"). A sideslip angle will arise if an aircraft yaws about its center of gravity and if the aircraft sideslips bodily, i.e. the center of gravity moves sideways. These angles are important because they are the principal source of changes in the aerodynamic forces and moments applied to the aircraft.

Spacecraft flight dynamics involve three main forces: propulsive (rocket engine), gravitational, and atmospheric resistance. Propulsive force and atmospheric resistance have significantly less influence over a given spacecraft compared to gravitational forces.

from Wikipedia Flight Dynamics

This topic includes the following resources and journeys:

 

 

Wind Tunnel Corrections and Data Reduction

Christopher Lum
171 min
Advanced
Video
Theory

This is the second of our 3 part series on wind tunnel testing. In this video, we discuss 11 different corrections and data reduction processes that are applied to raw wind tunnel data to...

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Coriolis Effect Demonstration (with Drones)

Christopher Lum
13 min
Intermediate
Video
Theory

We demonstrate how rotating reference frames give rise to the Coriolis effect and centrifugal acceleration. In this video, we approach this as a simple physics demonstration and examine...

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Numerically Linearizing a Dynamic System

Christopher Lum
104 min
Intermediate
Video
Theory

In this video we show how to linearize a dynamic system using numerical techniques. In other words, the linearization process does not require an analytical description of the system. This...

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Derivation of Rodrigues’ Rotation Formula

Christopher Lum
43 min
Intermediate
Video
Theory

In this video we explain and derive Rodrigues’ Rotation Formula. This functions describes how to rotate an arbitrary vector about another arbitrary axis of rotation. This has applications to...

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Manipulating Aerodynamic Coefficients

Christopher Lum
25 min
Intermediate
Video
Theory

In this video we discuss some potential problems you may encounter when attempting to perform operations with dimensionless aerodynamic coefficients such as CL and CD.

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