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Elevators on canards... would it work?

15 AdmiraLucky  2.0 years ago

Recently I posted a plane where I added elevators onto the canards and I noticed that it made the already broken maneuverability on the aircraft even more crazy. Now I'm wondering why I haven't control surfaces like this anywhere else. It's possible I just don't know enough about aerodynamics and there's an obvious reason, but I'm curious.

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    6,361 11qazxc

    Control surface behind center of mass pushes tail down, then wing pushes entire airplane up, so total force is wing lift-stab lift-mass
    Control surface in front of COM pushes aircraft up, so total force is wing lift+stab lift-mass
    You can make rear wing that's smaller than front one but has upwards lift, but such configuration is usually unstable because force on larger wing increases faster (in terms of AoA) than force on smaller wing and rotates airplane to the direction it already rotates.

    2.0 years ago
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    @TheFlightGuySP I just meant it makes the plane even more maneuverable than it was before.

    2.0 years ago
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    yaknow
    front control surfaces tend to have a completely opposite effect as it would if you put it behind

    2.0 years ago
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    The default wings in SP I've noticed are a bit "interesting" at times, so I can almost certainly guarantee that it's just weird wing physics.
    What exactly happens when you try to maneuver the aircraft?

    2.0 years ago