Toggle navigation sidebar

Toggle in-page Table of Contents

Aircraft Flight Mechanics by Harry Smith, PhD

Introduction to this website

Getting Started

Course Introduction
Assumed knowledge

Aircraft Performance

Aircraft Performance
Defining Aircraft ‘Speed’
Steady Level Flight
Climbing and Gliding Caveat
Climbing Flight
Range and Endurance
Acceleration, Manoeuvres, and Aircraft Loading
Questions and Solutions

Static Stability

Defining Static Stability
Co-ordinate system and Angles
Longitudinal Stability
Non-dimensional rates
Lateral Stability
Directional Stability
Cross-couplings

Aircraft Equations of Motion

Introduction
Axes Transformations
Absolute Acceleration
EoMs for Translation
EoMs for Rotation \(\def\dif{\text{d}}\)
Inertia Tensor Calculation \(\def\dif{\text{d}}\)
Summary of the equations of motion

Linearisation

The Road so Far…
Linearisation Theory
Stability Derivatives
Concise Form of Dimensional EoMs (Undergraduate Version)
Linear Aerodynamic Terms
Nondimensional Equations of Motion
Concise and other forms of EoMs (Working Engineer Version)
Worked Example
Comparison of the Linear and Nonlinear Equations of Motion: Aircraft Simulation

Flight Dynamics

Dynamic Stability
Aircraft Modes of Motion
Final Examples

References and Resources

Acknowledgements

repository
open issue

Index

By Harry Smith
© Copyright 2022.

Aircraft Flight Mechanics by Harry Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.aircraftflightmechanics.com.