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Old 6th Jul 2004, 19:56
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Mad (Flt) Scientist
 
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To add a few more details and also address catchup's post....

... Therefore, VmcG is ALWAYS higher KIAS speed than VmcA is... - VmcG is always the LOWEST possible V1 speed.
Sorry, I know of aircraft where Vmcg is higher than Vmca, for quite legitimate reasons, which I'll address below. And V1 may be being determined by facors other than Vmcg, even at the lightest weights, so it's a little unsafe to say that Vmcg is the lowest possible V1; you can't necessarily derive Vmcg from a knowledge of V1.

The reason why Vmcg may be higher or lower than Vmca arises from a number of considerations, both theoretical and practical. To address the practical:

Both Vmcg and Vmca are artifical, declared certification values for an aircraft. There is no requirement for the manufacturer to determine absolute truth; rather, it must be demonstrated (usually by test, plus supporting analysis) that a given speed meets the requirements of the regs. But it need not be the lowest speed which would meet the requirements. If I go out and demonstrate that I can meet the centreline deviation requirement for Vmcg at 100kts, and I am confident that I'll never need to use any lower value to achieve the performance I need for an economic product, I may never go trying to squeeze out the last two or three knots of Vmcg. Especially since it's an inherently risky test.
Similarly, Vmca is also a risky test and achieving the performance-driven target may well be enough. The practical upshot of that is that the declared Vmca and Vmcg may not represent the theoretical values.

As to the theory, because the two speeds are defined with different manoeuvres, it is possible that different factors may prove to be limiting the capability of the aircraft. This may be seen more easily by considering a more unusual form of configuration than is usually the case for a FAR25 transport.

If one were to have an aircraft with significant "powered lift" - either by a jet exhausting across the wing (as the Antonov short field twin jet did, I think) or, more usually, a turboprop type - then when an engine is failed in addition to the "normal" directional control problem there is a significant lateral control requirement to counteract the large asymmetric lift now present. If the roll controls on the aircraft are relatively weak, while the directional control (rudder) is powerful, one may find that maintaining adequate bank angle control actually limits the in-air minimum control speeds. However, the landing gear will usually absorb any rolling tendency on the ground and so the directional control is the dominant requirement for Vmcg.

In that case one would expect the Vmca speeds to be higher than the Vmcg speeds.

Essentially, Vmcg is pretty much a single axis control balance between rudder and engine-induced yaw. Vmca is a more complex problem involving the roll axis. Therefore scope exists, by changing the relative power of roll and yaw controls, to vary the relationship between Vmca and Vmcg.

To identify the specific aircraft:

Bombardier's Global Express has a slightly higher Vmca than Vmcg. The CRJ-700 has a lower Vmca than Vmcg. (In both cases, the differences in the speeds is small).

The difference may be partially attributed to inherent variation in the practical test results, and partly to differences in relative control powers. The geometry of the two planes is not that different, so it can be seen how sensitive this Vmca/Vmcg relation can be.
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