A sub-scale cargo plane whose tail fixes its flight modes also fixes its gust response

In a Froude-scaled 1:5 cargo UAV model, 24 of 78 mode-matched tails also match full-size gust response within 5%; the similar model is 27-33% off in pitch rate.

Research findings · 1 min read · Source
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A Froude-scaled model of a 1,000 kg cargo aircraft keeps the load a gust puts on the wing (peak load-factor increment within 2%) but not the pitch response: its peak pitch rate is 27 to 33% high. That was milestone 9a of the aerolog-scaling programme, and none of 17 power-matched wings with the original tail came within 10% on all three gust metrics.

Milestone 9b lets the tail change as well. Of the 78 tail designs that already match the three longitudinal modes within 5%, 72 are within 10% on the gust peaks at a 12.5-chord gradient and 24 are within 5% at all three gust lengths. The best is within 1.2%. The tail sets the rotational response, so restoring the modes restores most of the gust response with it.

The caveat is the one the programme keeps repeating: the tail's lift slope comes from the NeuralFoil surrogate, which ran 22 to 67% above measured UIUC data for similar sections, and a slope 20% lower breaks the mode match first. The gust result inherits that. Code, results and the log: research/aerolog-scaling/experiments/tail_gust/.

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