The Effects on Dynamic Lateral Stability and Control of Large Artificial Variations in the Rotary Stability Derivatives

This report presents the results of an investigation conducted in the Langley free-flight tunnel to determine the effects of large artificial variations of several rotary lateral-stability derivatives on the dynamic lateral stability and control characteristics of a 45 degree sweptback-wing airplane model. Calculations of the period and damping of the lateral motions and of the response to roll and yaw disturbances were made for correlation with the experimental results. The calculated results were in qualitative agreement with the experimental results in predicting the general trends in flight characteristics produced by large changes in the stability derivatives, but in some cases the theory with the assumption of zero lag was not in good quantitative agreement with the experimental results.