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Old 2nd Nov 2021, 22:30
  #49 (permalink)  
derdere
 
Join Date: Dec 2019
Location: Turkey
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That’s is what’s called spiral mode of the aircraft. Aircraft can have stable or unstable spiral mode. If it’s stable when you bank the aircraft and let it go it tends to recover itself from the bank over time. On the other hand, if it’s unstable, then bank of the aircraft gradually increases and ends up with what’s known as graveyard spiral.

It’s very closely related with dihedral effect. If aircraft has high wings or delta wings or wings that has positive dihedral (upward wingtips) then it’s tend to be more spirally stable. Meaning it will recover from the banks.

There is a tradeoff between spiral stability and dutch roll stability. The more spirally stable an aircraft is the more nasty dutch roll it has and vice versa. The spiral stability is not regarded as important as the other stability modes. And if there needs to be a tradeoff between spiral mode and dutch roll, the spiral stability is out of the window. And the reason for that is, even if it’s unstable it grows very slowly and by the time it becomes dangerous pilot already corrects it.

I have seen quite some aircraft that are spirally unstable. But hardly see one that is unstable in dutch roll.
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