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Old 7th August 2012 | 16:33
  #619 (permalink)  
ap08
 
Joined: May 2010
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I've been thinking long and hard on this:
If the sim really reproduces the airplane behaviour , the AF447 was is deep stall and they would never recover.
It does not. Covered many a time why it does not. Scrap the rest of the sentence.
2:11:45 Airplane pitches down from +15° to –10°, against full NU sidestick
Well , in this case it pretty much seems with what I experienced in the sim ...
and after much looking at the graphs in Annex 3 to BEA report, arrived at the following theory:

1. It is clear that the sim has no real data about the aircraft's behaviour at extreme angles of attack. However, some behaviour appears to be simulated, and the results do not appear to contradict reality. Is it a pure coincidence? IMHO, no one can answer this question with 100% certainty. Therefore, we should be open to all possibilities.

2. When the wing becomes stalled, the ailerons becomes useless. However, usually the pilot still has some pitch control at this moment, because the tail is supposed to stall later than the wing. Therefore, it is usually possible to break the stall by pushing the stick forward.

3. However, it is not impossible to get the tail stalled as well, if the airspeed is sufficiently low. Wouldn't it lead to complete loss of pitch control, just like it happened to both AF447 and A3TWENTY's simulator? If yes, doesn't this condition qualify as "deep stall", from which it is not possible to recover?

4. I would also suppose that the severity of stall is related to the aircraft's wing loading. If the plane has very low wing loading, like a Cessna or a glider, it can stall slightly but then chaotic aerodynamic forces flip it around, (much like it happens to a falling leaf). A330 is a heavy widebody, with very high wing loading, so when its speed has fallen sufficiently low for the tail to stall, there are simply no aerodynamic forces capable of disturbing its attitude(much like it happens to a falling rock).

My conclusion: any aircraft with sufficiently high wing loading can potentially enter "deep stall" - a freefall mode, from which it is not possible to recover...
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