PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Weathercock effect in turns
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Old 2nd Jul 2010, 19:05
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italia458
 
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PBL.. a center of lift can be in any defined section. Therefore, you could have an infinite number of center of lift vectors on a single wing. All I did was separate it into two, each wing having it's own center of lift. As you travel around a circle while in a turn, the outside wing moves faster, has more lift, but a lower AoA. It will in turn have a slightly different center of lift (a point, some distance from the leading edge of the wing).

As you mentioned, having more lift on the outside wing will cause a turning moment about the rotational axis (longitudinal axis) causing the airplane to bank further, which it will unless opposite aileron is applied or other aerodynamic forces are used to stop it.

One can also maybe think where the center of lift goes when one wing produces more lift than the other, and why that might give a rotational moment about earth-z.
2 questions.... 1) How does the total center of lift change when one wing produces more lift? 2) How does that give a rotational moment about the Z-axis?
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