PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Air Asia Indonesia Lost Contact from Surabaya to Singapore
Old 4th Feb 2015, 09:42
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When a tail loses lift the nose pitches down because the horizontal stabilizer pushes the tail down for stability.
Actually it is not for stability, but for moment compensation. The moment compensated is the nose-down pitching moment produced naturally by any cambered airfoil with attached flow. So when stalled, this pitching moment may disappear, and no more downforce on the tail is required. But that depends heavily on the specific airfoil characteristics, whether the flow separation starts at the trailing edge and extends forward, or whether it starts at the leading edge and reattaches further aft.
At 30° AoA there is no way to produce a down force, no plain flap (used as elevator) is that powerful and nobody would be insane enough to allow a stabilizer trim to move 30° nose down (relative to the fuselage). And as for a swept wing the outer wing is stalled first, there is so much nose up pitching moment that you need lift on the stabilizer to maintain stable flight.
Which however is not always desirable, as stable may mean unrecoverable, so you may prefer to lose control and start again by recovering from there.
Also the characteristic nose drop at stall is produced by the lift produced at the horizontal stabilizer at high AOA.
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