Related papers: Airplane Orbits and Satellite Orbits and Orbitfall…
Any control law for aircraft asymptotic stabilization requires the existence of an equilibrium condition, also called trim flight condition. At a constant velocity flight, for instance, there must exist an aircraft orientation such that…
Inertial forces are not intuitive; therefore, interesting examples are great help for learners. In this paper, we examine simple models for International Space Station (ISS) and airplane flying and identify the inertial forces involved and…
In the event of a total loss of thrust, a pilot must identify a reachable landing site and subsequently execute a forced landing. To do so, they must estimate which region on the ground can be reached safely in gliding flight. We call this…
The paper contributes towards the development of a unified control approach for longitudinal aircraft dynamics with large flight envelopes. Prior to the control design, we analyze the existence and the uniqueness of the equilibrium…
The nature of boundedness of orbits of a particle moving in a central force field is investigated. General conditions for circular orbits and their stability are discussed. In a bounded central field orbit, a particle moves clockwise or…
Engine failure is a recurring emergency in General Aviation and fixed-wing UAVs, often requiring the pilot or remote operator to carry out carefully planned glides to safely reach a candidate landing strip. We tackle the problem of…
We investigate the hovering dynamics of rigid bodies with up-down asymmetry placed in oscillating background flows. Recent experiments on inanimate pyramid-shaped objects in oscillating flows with zero mean component demonstrate that the…
This paper presents an algorithm for solving the problem of tracking smooth curves by a fixed wing unmanned aerial vehicle travelling with a constant airspeed and under a constant wind disturbance. The algorithm is based on the idea of…
The water bottle flipping challenge consists of spinning a bottle, partially filled with water, and making it land upright. It is quite a striking phenomenon, since at first sight it appears rather improbable that a tall rotating bottle…
Non-relativistic particles that are effectively confined to two dimensions can in general move on curved surfaces, allowing dynamical phenomena beyond what can be described with scalar potentials or even vector gauge fields. Here we…
Mechanics texts tell us that a particle in a bound orbit under gravitational central force moves on an ellipse, while introductory physics texts approximate the earth as flat, and tell us that the particle moves in a parabola. The…
Present work deals with the dynamics of vehicles which intentionally operate in the ground proximity. The dynamics in ground effect is influenced by the vehicle orientation with respect to the ground, since the aerodynamic force and moment…
We present a robotics-oriented, coordinate-free formulation of inverse flight dynamics for fixed-wing aircraft on SO(3). Translational force balance is written in the world frame and rotational dynamics in the body frame; aerodynamic…
The passive flight of a thin wing or plate is an archetypal problem in flow-structure interactions at intermediate Reynolds numbers. This seemingly simple aerodynamic system displays an impressive variety of steady and unsteady motions that…
Birds employ rapid pitch-up motions for different purposes: perching birds use this motion to decelerate and come to a complete stop while hunting birds, like bald eagles, employ it to catch prey and swiftly fly away. Motivated by these…
We report on the motion of a spinning sleeping top on an inclined plane. Below a critical inclination angle the sleeping tops are force free. The trajectory of a sleeping top on weakly inclined planes in the adiabatic limit is invariant of…
Insects and birds are often faced by opposing requirements for agile and stable flight. Here, we explore the interplay between aerodynamic effort, maneuverability, and stability in a model system that consists of a $\Lambda$-shaped flyer…
Small particles are transported over long distances in the atmosphere, with significant environmental impact. The transport of symmetric particles is well understood, but atmospheric particles, such as curved microplastic fibres or ash…
Close planetary flybys are frequently employed as a technique to place spacecraft on extreme solar system trajectories that would otherwise require much larger booster vehicles or may not even be feasible when relying solely on chemical…
The flight of a quadcopter drone, readily available as a toy, is analyzed using simple physics concepts. A smartphone with built-in accelerometer and gyroscope was attached to the drone to register the accelerations and angular velocities…