Talk:Flying wing

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Contents 1 Stability and centre of pressure 2 About use of digital flight control system on flying wings. 3 Tailless types are not necessarily Flying Wings 4 Merging Flying Wing article

[edit] Stability and centre of pressure

This article at present misses another factor in the design of a stable flying wing. With a normal aerofoil, as the angle of attack increases, the centre of pressure moves forward, which further rotates the wing to a higher angle of attack, and so on - a runaway effect that causes the wing to rotate backwards unless counteracted with the tail surfaces. On a flying wing, this effect must be reversed for stability, and this is achieved by using a "reflex" aerofoil section where the CP moves backwards with increasing angle of attack (This is table because this movement drops the wing reducing the angle of attack - so it will fly stably in equilibrium). A reflex section starts off like a normal aerofoil at the front, but is curved upwards towards the rear, so that the trailing part off the upper surface is concave rather than the conventional convex. This can be seen in the photograph of the B-35 at the wingtip. I think this needs to be worked into the article, which presently suggests that stability is achieved solely using sweepback, which isn't the whole story. Graham 00:23, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

This discussion really belongs in the tailless aircraft article, with just a brief summary and pointer here. Also, FWIW sweepback combined with tip washout is an alternative way to achieve stability. -- Steelpillow (talk) 21:14, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] About use of digital flight control system on flying wings.

Modern digital flight control systems enable flying wing designers to move the the GC aft of the AC. While statically unstable, the digital flight control system constantly produces correction movements in all control surfaces to keep the flying wing in level flight.

This is significant because both the B-2 and future flying wings (as well as blended wing bodies) are or are going to be digitally controlled. B-2 is statically unstable.

Please also note that stabilization of a flying wing does more than just providing trim in pitch. The lack of conventional tails makes flying wings exceedingly complicated to deal with things like adverse yaw. In fact, to properly roll a flying wing all pitch, yaw and roll controls are deployed. This will be hard especially without digital flight controls. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Benhongh (talk • contribs) 09:27, 1 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Tailless types are not necessarily Flying Wings

The Dunne aircraft mentioned and illustrated on this page is surely not a flying wing, but a tailless aircraft type. It has a very evident fuselage containing the aeronaut/s and engine. -- Steelpillow 18:47, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Likewise the Waldo Whatsit. I wonder how many more examples like this are to be found on this page. They need moving to the tailless aircraft page, and better examples here to replace them. Either that, or somebody needs to drum up some respectable references to establish the usage of "flying wing" to mean any tailless design (like I had to do for "tailless"). -- Steelpillow 13:42, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Done. -- Steelpillow 18:43, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merging Flying Wing article