Generic stability and control for aerospace flight vehicle conceptual design

Abstract

Abstract The recent period has been filled with exceptionally interesting developments and advances, resulting in high-performance conventional and non-conventional manned and unmanned aircraft. Although those vehicles seem to comply well with specific mission performance requirements, one is still confronted with an apparent weakness to reliably stabilise and control throughout the flight envelope. Since the provision of satisfactory stability and control characteristics invariably compromises flight performance, it becomes essential to identify and integrate performance-optimal stability and control design solutions early during the flight vehicle definition phase. In particular, the conceptual design of integrated control effectors for advanced aircraft is far from being trivial. Never before have we been presented with such tremendous wealth of specialised data and information suitable for detail design of controls. In contrast, never before has it been necessary to approach any one of the primary design disciplines still as entirely ad hoc and inconsistent as in the case of designing controls during the conceptual design phase. This need initiated the development of a configuration independent (generic) stability and control methodology capable of sizing primary control effectors of fixed wing subsonic to hypersonic designs of conventional and unconventional, symmetric and asymmetric configuration layouts. This paper summarises the methodology concept and demonstrates its versatility and validity by analyzing selected stability and control characteristics of the Northrop YB-49 flying wing.