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Stability
The aim of stability analysis is to determine if a design is statically and dynamically stable.
The moment about the y-axis of the body-fixed coordinate system affects the stability of the design. To have a design that is "statically stable" the moment about the y-axis should be restoring. What is meant by a restoring moment?
Consider the image below. As the angle of attack is increased, the moment about the y-axis
becomes more and more negative. This means that the design has a tendency to return to its original angle of attack. This tendency is called "static stability".

Static stability tendency
Since the moment about the y-axis
depends on the center of gravity location, moving the center of gravity location forward or aft will affect the stability of the design. The image blow shows the pitching moment coefficient
as a function of the angle of attack. For a stable design the derivative of
with respect to
must be negative
.

Pitching moment coefficient versus angle of attack
Movement of the center of gravity front to aft affects the value of
. The derivative is referred to as the pitch static stability derivative and must be negative if the design is to be stable. It is interesting to determine as the center of gravity is moved at what point the value of
becomes 0. This point (or position of the center of gravity) is referred to as the neutral point.
If we have the values of
and
at two different angles of attack we can determine the location of the neutral point using the following equation:
The above equation calculates the pitching moment about an arbitrary point
along the x-axis of the body-fixed coordinate system. Since we are interested in finding at what point
becomes zero we take the derivative of the equation with respect to the angle of attack and equate it to zero.
Rearranging the equation for
gives:
Solving the above equation will give the location of the center of gravity for which
. This location is referred to as the neutral point.
If the the center of gravity is behind the neutral point, the design will be statically unstable. If the center of gravity is in front of the neutral point, the design will be statically stable.
The static margin
is a measure of how statically stable the design is. The static margin can be calculated from the from the following equation:
The following example shows how to determine the neutral point location of a fixed-wing UAV with reference area
of
and reference chord
of
. A body-fixed coordinate system is placed at the nose. The reference speed is
and the reference density, pressure and viscosity are evaluated at an altitude of
(ISA).
Both fixed-wake and free-wake simulations of the fixed-wing UAV were performed at
and
deg.

Fixed-wake simulation of the UAV at zero angle of attack

Free-wake simulation of the UAV at zero angle of attack

Fixed-wake simulation of the UAV at 5 deg angle of attack

Free-wake simulation of the UAV at 5 deg angle of attack
The table below summarises the values of the
and
coefficients obtained from the simulations.
Simulation type | | | |
Fixed-wake | 0 | −0.5357 | −1.1156 |
Fixed-wake | 5 | −1.0417 | −2.2843 |
Free-wake | 0 | −0.2774 | −0.6383 |
Free-wake | 5 | −1.0280 | −2.2641 |
The neutral point is calculated from the previously derived expression:
For the fixed-wake simulations the neutral point is located at
whereas for the free-wake simulations the neutral point is located at
. The absolute difference amounts to approximately 6.5 percent.
The free-wake simulations give more accurate prediction for the neutral point location as they account for the wake deformation. This is confirmed by forced-pitch oscillation simulations. The neutral point locations obtained from forced-pitch oscillation simulations and from free-wake simulations agree well.
Once the neutral point location is determined, the location of the center of gravity can be calculated using the following equation:
where
is the static margin. The greater the static margin the more statically stable the UAV is in pitch. For a 10% static margin (
)
is
.