User:Steelpillow/Aircraft

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My page for messing about with and preparing articles etc. for all things Aircraft.

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Diagrams

Wing configurations

• Semi-elliptical. (work in Snyder/Arup semicurcular types?)
• Asymmetrical (to counter propeller torque)?

Small diagrams

Do in two versions, with and without text callouts:

• Leading edge extensions - may take several diagrams
• High-lift devices - LE and TE flaps, slat + slot.

See Wing configuration#Minor surface features for inspiration on further illustrations.

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Early flying machines

Main article: Early flying machines

Continue makeover:

• merge more lists
• focus on technological development (we already have chronologies and personalities)

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Fan-in-wing

Fan-in-wing is a Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft configuration in which lifting fans are located in large holes in an otherwise conventional fixed wing.

The aircraft takes off using the fans to provide lift, then transitions to fixed-wing lift in forward flight. Several experimental craft have been flown, but none has ever entered production.

History

A number of experimental fan-in-wing aircraft were evaluated in the USA during the late 1950s and throughout much of the 1960s.

The Avro Canada Avrocar, commissioned by the USA, was intended to be a technology demonstrator for a supersonic VTOL aircraft. It featured a single central fan in a circular flying wing. It underwent trials between 1958 and 1961 but, due to its unstable "flying saucer" aerodynamics and lower than expected thrust, never flew out of ground effect. By contrast the Ryan XV-5 Vertifan of 1964 was an otherwise conventional delta-wing jet. It had a large fan in each wing and a third, smaller fan in the nose to provide balance in pitch. It was more successful, with one of the two prototypes flying until 1971.

The Vanguard C2 and C2D Omniplane had two fans, with one in each wing. It underwent tethered trials between 1959 and 1962 but never flew untethered. In the late 1960s NASA conducted wind tunnel experiments on a series of larger aircraft designs using different numbers of fans in the wings.

Beginning with a one-sixth scale model in 1962, Paul Moller has been experimenting with the flying saucer configuration ever since. All have had a central cockpit but have varied between a single lift fan surrounding the cockpit, twin fans behind the cockpit or, more recently, eight individual fans distributed around it. Some examples such as the XM-2 of 1965 have been able to hover within ground effect. The artificially-stabilised M200X was re-engined in 1989 and can fly out of ground effect, but even a ground-effect capable craft has yet to see an FAA certified production variant.

In 2011 the Anglo-Italian AgustaWestland Project Zero hybrid tiltrotor/fan-in-wing unmanned technology demonstrator was flown successfully.

Recent projects include the Ray, having four fans arranged similarly to a quadrotor, with a small one in front of a larger one behind it in each wing, and the Northrop MUVR ship-to-shore resupply aircraft having one fan in each wing as with the older Omniplane.

List of fan-in-wing aircraft

Type	Date	Status	Description
AgustaWestland Project Zero	2011	Experimental	Twin tiltrotor/fans. Hybrid tiltrotor/fan-in-wing unmanned technology demonstrator.
Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar	1958	Experimental	Single central fan in circular "flying saucer" wing. 2 examples flown. Trials 1958-1961, never flew out of ground effect
Locheed Martin VARIOUS	2010	Project	Twin fans. Multi-role UAV.
Moller M200X Volantor	1989	Experimental	Eight fans in circular "flying saucer" wing.
NASA wind tunnel test models	1967	Project	Various designs.
Northrop MUVR	2011	Project	Twin fans. Ship-to-shore resupply aircraft.
Ray	2010	Project	Four unequal-size fans.
Ryan XV-5 Vertifan	1964	Experimental	Three unequal-size fans. 2 examples built. One of these flew until 1971.
Vanguard C2 and C2D Omniplane	1959	Experimental	Twin fans. Tethered trials 1959-1962.

See also

• Convertiplane
• Ducted fan
• FanWing
• Quadcopter

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More triplanes

Article - Triplane

This is getting to the point where a List of triplanes would be useful to hive off the lesser types.

British:

• Sopwith Snark: ca. 1918
• Sopwith Rhino: ca. 1918
• Sopwith Cobham: ca. 1918
• Felixstowe Fury: 1919

French:

• Labourdette-Halbron H.T.1 / H.T.2: seaplane/s
• Astoux-Vedrine] variable incidence testbed 1916
• Morane-Saulnier TRK
• Levy-Besson triplane: 1917

America:

• Curtiss triplanes assorted, on land and water.

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Lift and stability

Articles affected

• Canard (aeronautics)
• Stabilizer (aircraft)
• Horizontal stabilizer (currently a redirect to tailplane)
• Tailplane
• Three surface aircraft
• Longitudinal static stability

Conventional tailplane lift

Some tailplanes can and do provide lift. What we need are references (like this):

• An example is provided by the Bachem Ba 349 Natter VTOL rocket-powered interceptor, which had a lifting tail and was both stable and controllable in flight.
• Pinsker, W.J.G.; The Control Characteristics of Aircraft Direct-Lift Control, R&M No. 3629, Aerodynamics Research Council, Page 3; "The elevator of the conventional aircraft also produces lift". [5]
• Editorial, "Aircraft Development - over 50 years: The second Cantor lecture of the R.S.A." Flight, 12 December 1958, Pages 909-910. [6] Table 1 describes the braced monoplane and tractor biplane as "Stable. Lifting tailplane."
• Answers to correspondents, Flight, 2 November 1916, Page 962, [7]; "A "lifting tail" is one which normally carries a certain amount of load, and which is therefore often cambered in order to make it more efficient. For instance, the tail planes of the old Farman biplanes were "lifting tail planes," and were, as a matter of fact, rather heavily cambered. By a non-lifting tail plane is meant one which does not, in the normal flying attitude, carry any portion of the load, but is merely "floating." This type of plane is usually, although not invariably, made of symmetrical section—i.e., it is either a perfectly flat plane, built up of a framework of steel tubes, or it is constructed of spars and ribs after the fashion of the main planes, but symmetrical in section and convex on both sides. The object of the latter form of section is, of course, to provide a good " streamline " shape which will offer a minimum of resistance. During flight it constantly occurs that such a tail plane is momentarily loaded, the load being either upwards or downwards according to circumstances, and then, of course, the tail plane is no longer, strictly speaking, " non-lifting." ... a non-lifting tail plane is not invariably symmetrical in section. Some designers favour a section in which the upper surface is convex, while the lower surface is perfectly flat. The reasons usually advanced for the employment of such a section are that, as the tail planes may-—and, indeed, frequently do—work in the down draught from the main planes, a tail plane set parallel to the path of the machine, or, in other words, parallel to the propeller shaft, is virtually subject to a load acting in a downward direction. Now, an unsymmetrical tail plane like that referred to above is still giving a certain amount of lift a t o angle of incidence, whereas the symmetrical .section would, of course, give no lift when the incidence was zero. The plano-convex section therefore tends, owing to the slight lift at no angle of incidence, to counteract the effect of the down draught from the wings, and may therefore be said to be equivalent to a flat or streamline plane set at a slight angle to the propeller shaft. The tail plane of the B.E.2C, as is the case on the majority of modern machines, is of the non-lifting type."

Canard stability

A simple explanation

Don't know what happened to the old one, but this is a bit different anyway.

A conventional aerofoil wing is unstable in pitch, making it very difficult to fly straight and level. The traditional solution is to add a smaller horizontal stabliser surface, usually as a conventional tailplane behind the main wing but sometimes as a "canard" foreplane in front.

A tailplane acts much like the feathers on an arrow to stabilise the aircraft: if the nose pitches up, the rear of the tail angles down, increasing the lift from the airflow to push the tail back up. But on a foreplane this increased lift tends to pitch the nose up even more - clearly a destabilising effect - so how can it be a "stabiliser"?

A tailless aircraft, having only the main wing as a horizontal surface, is both light weight and has low drag. But with a conventional aerofoil wing it is unstable and requires a second, smaller surface to stabilise it - a horizontal stabiliser. But should the stabiliser be placed in front of or behind the main wing? Wherever the designer places it, it stabilises the aircraft as a whole and as such is indeed a stabiliser. Technically in a canard design the stabilising moment around the aircraft centre of mass is provided by the main wing, which now acts like the feathers on an arrow, while the canard's lift moment is destabilising but much smaller. This is only made possible by the addition of the foreplane - without it the main wing could not be moved aft to act like the feathers on an arrow.

Thus, one can find many references to a foreplane as being either a stabiliser or destabilising , depending on the focus of the discussion.

This seemingly paradoxical situation is sometimes described as "tail-first" or putting the tail ahead of the wing.

It’s hard to step in without sounding too annoying at this point, but I’ll do my best.

Since we can afford it outside of a formal article, I would advise tackling the problem with these two steps:

1. Ignore the destabilizing effect of the wing profile. Most of the problem of aircraft stability can be described and solved when all surfaces have symmetrical profiles, and this allows for greatly-simplified equations (no more shifting of the lift centres as the aircraft speeds up, no need for using force coefficients)
2. Take care to define "stability" in a quantifiable way. Fundamentally it is just the derivative of total moment exerted about the CG with respect to angle of attack. It needs to be negative ([negative] pitch-down moment when [positive] pitch-up angle). So all we have to do is add up the contributions from each surface, ie, lift slope (in N/deg, not the coefficient one) times distance to CG.

With those, just a few drawings and a single simple equation are enough to give meaningful (and numerical) answers to your (smart) questions. For example, the words "wherever the designer places it" are not accurate. If the stabilizer characteristics are frozen, there is always a position far back on the airplane that will enable it to provide the required stability, usually with negative lift but perhaps even with zero lift. However, forward of the main wing, not only are we looking at CG range or high-CL restrictions (which is why airliners stay away from it), but there may not be a solution at all... in order to shift the CG sufficiently forward of the wing the canard might end up loaded with more than it can physically carry. Obviously, it sometimes works out nicely =). Here are a few rather informal slides that I gathered up in this spirit for a short introduction on the topic (feel free to rummage around). Once the layout basics are worked out, then we can add back wing camber (→ aerodynamic center), vertical shifts, wing-stab interaction, dyanmic stabilty, and all the other delights. PS: I do feel like I’m stomping around, and won’t be offended if you erase this comment away. Ariadacapo (talk) 20:11, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi again, thanks for commenting (and for the barnstar!). My focus here is on the use of terms such as "stability" and "stabilizer" in the context of canard aerodynamics. Your focus seems to be more on the more general technical analysis. I think your approach is a sensible one - keep it simple and introduce the complications later. You comment that a given foreplane may not be able to stabilise, no matter how far forward it is placed. However, if a foreplane is overloaded, say by 20%, would moving it forward at least 30% further not allow it to act as desired? The other point I would emphasise is the smooth continuum from conventional to Delanne tandem to equal tandem (e.g. the Rutan Quickie you illustrate) to the Miles Libellulas with their shorter foreplanes to the true canard. An interesting couple of graphs would be the amount of lift generated in normal flight by the fore and aft surfaces as one moves along the continuum. At what point (if at all) does the rear surface lift dip below the zero line and the forward surface peak above 100%? My suspicion is that there are a lot more zero-lift and even lifting tailplanes around than modern folkore would have it - there certainly used to be. Focusing the bulk of one's thought on the extreme conditions (such as landing and takeoff, conventional vs. canard, etc.) can draw one's mind away from the fundamentals. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:39, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

References

"Stabilizer"

(a 3-surface patent, what's more)

Tail ahead of the wing

"Tail-first"

Foreplane as a destabilizing surface

Main wing as the stabilizing one

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Three surface aircraft

Needs sections on the soft stall and STOL, filling out some of the technical detail.

Soft stall characteristics

A three surface design can be arranged so that at high angles of attack the foreplane is a lifting surface and is the first to stall. The loss of lift in the stall causes the aircraft nose to drop, reducing the angle of attack and preventing the main wing from stalling. This "soft" stall provides a level of safety in the stall which is not usually available in conventional designs.

Care must be taken in the design that the turbulent wake from the stalled foreplane does not in itself disturb the airflow over the main wing sufficiently to cause significant loss of lift and cancel out the nose-down pitching moment.

[The Beech Starship is a canard with soft stall. does the third (tail) surface affect matters significantly?]

From the History section, for reference

In 1920s George Fernic developed the idea of two lifting surfaces in tandem, together with a conventional tailplane. In the stall the smaller foreplane was designed to stall first, allowing the aircraft to recover safely without stalling the main wing. The Fernic T-9, a three surface monoplane, flew in 1929. Fernic was killed in an accident while flying its successor the FT-10 Cruisaire.

In the 1950s James Robertson developed his experimental Skyshark. This was a broadly conventional design but with a variety of features, including a small canard foreplane, intended to give not only a safe stall but good Short takeoff and landing (STOL) performance. The foreplane allowed STOL performance to be achieved without the high angles of attack and accompanying dangers of stalling required by conventional STOL designs. The aircraft was evaluated by the US Army. Robertson's system was commercialised as the Wren 460, a modified Cessna light aircraft. This in turn was later licensed and produced during the 1980s as the Peterson 260SE and with the foreplane modification only as the 230SE. In 2006 a ruggedised variant, the Peterson Katmai, entered production. A broadly similar approach is taken by the 1988 Eagle-XTS and its derivatives, the Eagle 150 series.

Short takeoff and landing (STOL) characteristics

[Needs to cover both civil and military designs]

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Lee-Richards annular aircraft

During the pioneer years before the first World War, Cedric Lee and George Tilghman Richards in the UK constructed and flew a series of aircraft having a novel flat ring-shaped or annular wing. They built both biplane and monoplane types, and in 1909 [not until 1913 or 14?] flew one of the first statically stable aircraft. [Where did I get that 1909 from? It is not borne out below].

Kitchen/Lee-Richards annular biplane

G.J.A. Kitchen patented and built an annular-wing biplane in 1910. Lee bought both and Richards joined him in completing it and/or making modifications. Flight tests in 1911 failed and the biplane would later be destroyed on the ground. Thereafter experiments were conducted with models and a full size glider.

See also the Mortimer and Vaughan Safety - one in 1910, another in 1911. Neither of them flew and a publicity photograph of a machine apparently in flight in fact shows supporting wires. (Angelucci and Matricardi, Sampson Low, Page 72) Such a photograph appeared in Jane's 1913.

Lee-Richards annular monoplanes

Three monoplanes flown, the first crashed following its first flight in 1913, the second and third in 1914.

The circular planform allowed the wing span to be narrower than a conventional wing, and the aircraft was unusual for the period in being longer than it was wide.

There is a model of a Lee-Richards monoplane type in the Science Museum, London.

Photos, potential references, etc.

• Sieger, Herb; Early Birds: volume 2
• Goodall, M. and Tagg, A,; British Aircraft before the Great War, Schiffer (2001)
• Lewis, P.; British Aircraft 1809-1914, Putnam
• "The Cedric Lee monoplane", Flight, May 2 1914, Page 468. [8]
• 1914 monoplane photo
• biplane photo - replica for "Those magnificent men"

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Articles worth deleting/reorganising?

• Splitter plate (aircraft).
• Stability and control surfaces - simplify article set.
• Leading edge gizmos - simplify article set.
• Composite and carry arrangements - simplify article set (see below).

Different kinds of composite and carry arrangements

Current pages

• Composite aircraft
• Parasite aircraft
  • Parasite fighter - redirects to Parasite aircraft
• Carrier aircraft - disambig
  • Airborne aircraft carrier - Merge/redirect to Mother ship?
• Mother ship
  • Launch aircraft - redirects to Mother ship
  • Captive carry - redirects to Mother ship
• Air launch

Operational scenarios

• Main aircraft launches small objects such as short-range missiles.
• Main aircraft launches larger objects such as cruise missiles or small space rockets.
• Main aircraft slips or drops booster craft, such as a slip wing.
• Main aircraft launches smaller craft to aid its mission, i.e. parasite aircraft.
• Large aircraft launches the operational craft such as a mail plane or reconnaissance drone.
• Large aircraft ferries smaller craft.

Aerodynamic scenarios

• Craft fly essentially as a single aerodynamic entity - main craft noticeably affected by separation.
• Aerodynamics dominated by main craft - main craft essentially unaffected by separation.

Role scenarios

• Large craft carries out operational role, with smaller in support.
• Small craft carries out operational role, with larger in support.

Classifications vs properties

Classifications vs properties

Classification	Separates in flight	Aerodynamics	Mission craft	Comments
Composite aircraft	Yes	Composite?	Either	Aerodynamic composites that can separate
Parasite aircraft	Yes	Minimal effect	Larger	or are ground-attack craft also parasites?
Carrier aircraft	Either	Either	Either	Ambiguous (c.f. carrier-borne)
Airborne aircraft carrier	Either?	Either	Either	= Mother ship (aircraft), or is a mother ship not necessarily able to launch its offspring?
Mother ship	Yes?	Either?	Either	More general than aircraft
Launch aircraft	Yes	Either	Smaller	= Mother ship (aircraft), or is a mother ship not necessarily able to launch its offspring?
Captive carry	No	Either?	Larger	Not encyclopedic
Air launch	Yes	Either?	Smaller	A good foil to Composite aircraft

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Gustave Whitehead

References:

• Gustave Whitehead
• Who was first the Wrights or Whitehead?: FlightJournal blog - links to other important resources.
• gustave-whitehead.com website
• Daily Mail article
• Jane's all the world's aircraft, 2013 - editorial.
• Weissenborn, G.K.; "Did Whitehead fly?", Air Enthusiast 35, Pilot Press (1988), Pages 19-21 and 74-75.

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Just in case

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