How Does the Dihedral Effect Work in Aircraft?

so stability is often a sought after trait in aviation because it makes piloting easier and safer the tendency to return to a neutral attitude after maneuvers and disturbances makes an aircraft more manageable especially in poor weather there are lots of ways of increasing stability along all the axes of control but designing a wing to have a dihedral angle is one way of increasing stability along the roll axis naturally this can be seen in a lot of civilian aircraft and airliners like this boeing 737 which has a dihedral angle of 6 degrees but how does the dihedral actually increase stability when an aircraft rolls in any particular direction it will begin to slip in that direction because of an imbalance of forces if an aircraft that is cruising with all of its forces balanced suddenly rolls in one direction the lift vector will no longer cancel out the force of gravity not only does the lift vector not cancel out gravity it also points off in the direction of the roll now there's a net force on the aircraft and it will begin to accelerate or slip in the direction of that net force for an aircraft with straight wings it is my understanding that the side slip does not really have a strong effect neither wing begins to create more lift than the other however with a dihedral wing the side slip will create a restoring torque on the aircraft it's a little hard to visualize this in 3d but the slip actually increases the angle of attack of the lower wing therefore increasing its lift and pushing it up again so to summarize rolling the aircraft induces a slip which causes the wings to produce different amounts of lift this applies a net torque to the aircraft about its roll axis restoring it to a wings level attitude in this clip you can see the effect in action as the glider slips back and forth but maintains roll stability it's important to note that the wings create different amounts of lift only because of the slip condition i've actually seen a variety of false explanations from prominent places including flight test it's important to understand that without the side slip no net torque develops

Channel: Benjijart

Views: 54,092

Keywords: dihedral, wing, dihedral wing, dihedral effect, aviation, aerodynamics, stability, effect, how does dihedral work, how does dihedral effect work, why are dihedral wings stable, stable, airplane, plane, flight mechanics, aerospace engineering, engineering, side slip, slip, flight, wings, aeronautics, roll, dihedral angle, roll stability, moment, torque, how does the dihedral effect work

Id: Irf9ECVg_TA

Length: 2min 0sec (120 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 09 2020