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Asana Task

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Thushanth Parameswaran updating Date:

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2024/

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UPDATE TITLE

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07/03

Background Information

The empennage is the plane's Tail section composed of Horizontal and Vertical stabilizers, It also has a control surface to control the Yaw(Rudder) and Pitch(Elevator). There are various types of Epenage but to keep things simple, we have decided to go with the traditional empennage below. In the future, we will explore more empennage designs.

Empennage_components_FAA_GFH-20240704-003808.svgImage Added

Horizontal Stabilizer

We can imagine it as an upside-down wing. It aims to create a downforce similar to a wing on an F1 car. You might wonder why we need downforce. It is simple. As you see in the first image there 2 forces, lift force created by the wing which acts at the Center of lift and the weight of the aircraft which acts at center mass. Let's do some calculations. We first begin by giving an arbitrary value for the distance between CL and CG to be 1 m. We will also say that lift force is +1000N and weight is -1000N therefore net force is zero. Moment = F x Distance. Let’s calculate the moment at CL which is 1000N x 1m = 1000Nm Counter-clockwise. The Net Moment is not zero resulting in aircraft pitching down.

moment-nose-pitch-20240704-005146.jpgImage Added

moment-opposite-direction-20240704-004948.jpgImage Added