Effects of Aircraft Tail Configurations on Sensitivity to Yaw Disturbances

Abstract

A wind tunnel test was conducted to compare the characteristics of low speed stability and control for aircraft with conventional tail and V-tail configurations. Comparison was made in terms of static directional stability at selected test speed of 40 m/s, which corresponds to Reynolds number of 0.1622 x 106 based on the chord. Three types of simplified tail-only model were tested in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia's Low Speed Wind Tunnel (UTM-LST). Results show that the V-tail configuration greatly affects the aerodynamic characteristics in directional stability as the side force and yaw moment tends to vary linearly with yaw angles up to 25 degrees, compared to conventional tail that has linear characteristics up to only 10 degrees yaw

Aerodynamic Performance Analysis of VTOL Arm Configurations of a VTOL Plane UAV Using a Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation

“…V-tail was selected as the empennage configuration for the quad-plane design. The V-tail was found to be a stable configuration in crosswind conditions [28]. The fuselage was extended to the V-tail as the tails needed to be mounted on it.…”

“…where: s = wing area (m 2 ), b = wingspan (m), Cr = root chord (m), Ct = tip chord (m), AR = aspect ratio. According to Table 4, the required coefficient of lift (C L ) was 1.4, so the NACA 4412 was selected as the wing airfoil because it had a C L of 1.6 [28]. Table 5 shows the results of the wing design calculated using Equations ( 1)-(4).…”

“…As such, the horizontal stabilizer span is constrained. NACA 0006 was chosen for the empennage airfoil as it has zero C L at 0 • angle of attack [28]. Using equations provided by [20], the necessary values and dimensions to design the empennage were calculated, such as the vertical tail volume coefficient (V v ), the horizontal tail volume coefficient (V h ), the vertical tail moment arm (L v ), and the horizontal tail moment arm (L v ).…”

Estudio de configuraciones no convencionales de los estabilizadores para aviones de transporte aéreo comercial

“…Puesto que las aplicaciones son principalmente para aviones pilotados por control remoto, los estudios se centran en investigar en este contexto. Tratan de comparar las derivadas de estabilidad direccionales entre una configuración convencional y una cola en V, llevando a cabo ensayos en túnel aerodinámico a bajos números de Reynolds (Musa et al 2015(Musa et al , 2014. Precisamente por el número de Reynolds empleado, los resultados son útiles para los RPAS (Remoted Piloted Aircraft System) que lleven esta configuración.…”