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In flight dynamics, longitudinal stability is the stability of an aircraft in the longitudinal, or pitching, plane. This characteristic is important in determining whether an aircraft pilot will be able to control the aircraft in the pitching plane without requiring excessive attention or excessive strength.
Stability is the ability of the aircraft to counteract disturbances to its flight path. According to David P. Davies, there are six types of aircraft stability: speed stability, stick free static longitudinal stability, static lateral stability, directional stability, oscillatory stability, and spiral stability. [5]: 164
Most aircraft trimmed for straight-and-level flight, if flown stick-fixed, will eventually develop a tightening spiral-dive. [2] If a spiral dive is entered unintentionally, the result can be fatal. A spiral dive is not a spin; it starts, not with a stall or from torque, but with a random perturbation, increasing roll and airspeed.
Stability derivatives, and also control derivatives, are measures of how particular forces and moments on an aircraft change as other parameters related to stability change (parameters such as airspeed, altitude, angle of attack, etc.). For a defined "trim" flight condition, changes and oscillations occur in these parameters.
Longitudinal stability and control may be obtained with other wing configurations, including canard, tandem wing and tailless aircraft. Some types of aircraft are stabilized with electronic flight control; in this case, fixed and movable surfaces located anywhere along the aircraft may serve as active motion dampers or stabilizers.
The figure on the right shows the variation of moment with AoA for a stable airplane. The negative slope for positive α indicates stability in pitch. The combination of the two concepts of aerodynamic center and pitching moment coefficient make it relatively simple to analyse some of the flight characteristics of an aircraft. [1]: Section 5.10
Bryan showed that the stability characteristics of airplanes could be separated into longitudinal and lateral groups with the corresponding motions called modes of motion. These modes of motion were either aperiodic, which means that the airplane steadily approaches or diverges from a trimmed condition, or oscillatory, which means that the ...
Grumman F-14 Tomcat jet fighter during a takeoff, with stabilators deflected upwards. A stabilator is a fully movable aircraft horizontal stabilizer.It serves the usual functions of longitudinal stability, control and stick force requirements [1] otherwise performed by the separate parts of a conventional horizontal stabilizer (which is fixed) and elevator (which is adjustable).