IOP PUBLISHING BIOINSPIRATION &BIOMIMETICS Bioinsp. Biomim. 6 (2011) 026005 (20pp) doi:10.1088/1748-3182/6/2/026005 Flight mechanics of a tailless articulated wing aircraft Aditya A Paranjape, Soon-Jo Chung and Michael S Selig Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA E-mail:
[email protected] Received 22 October 2010 Accepted for publication 16 March 2011 Published 12 April 2011 Online at stacks.iop.org/BB/6/026005 Abstract This paper investigates the flight mechanics of a micro aerial vehicle without a vertical tail in an effort to reverse-engineer the agility of avian flight. The key to stability and control of such a tailless aircraft lies in the ability to control the incidence angles and dihedral angles of both wings independently. The dihedral angles can be varied symmetrically on both wings to control aircraft speed independently of the angle of attack and flight path angle, while asymmetric dihedral can be used to control yaw in the absence of a vertical stabilizer. It is shown that wing dihedral angles alone can effectively regulate sideslip during rapid turns and generate a wide range of equilibrium turn rates while maintaining a constant flight speed and regulating sideslip. Numerical continuation and bifurcation analysis are used to compute trim states and assess their stability. This paper lays the foundation for design and stability analysis of a flapping wing aircraft that can switch rapidly from flapping to gliding flight for agile manoeuvring in a constrained environment. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version) 1.