Aerodynamics of tailless plane

[edit] Longitudinal stability

A tailless aeroplane has no separate horizontal stabiliser, either behind (Tailplane) or in front of
(canard foreplane) the main lifting surface. Because of this the aerodynamic center of an
ordinary wing would lie ahead of the aircraft's center of gravity, creating instability in pitch.
Some other method must be used to move the aerodynamic center backward and make the
aircraft stable. There are two main ways for the designer to achieve this:

 Sweep the wing leading edge back, either as a swept wing or delta wing, and reduce the
angle of incidence of the outer wing section so that it acts rather like a conventional
tailplane stabiliser. If this is done progressively along the span of the outer section, it is
called tip washout. The outer section of the wing now acts as a conventional tailplane,
and in level flight the aircraft should be trimmed so that the tips do not contribute any lift:
they may even need to provide a small downthrust. This reduces the overall efficiency of
the wing, but for many designs - especially for high speeds - this is outweighed by the
reductions in drag, weight and cost over a conventional stabiliser. This method was
developed by the English aeronaut J. W. Dunne in the early 20th century, but did not gain
widespread use until the jet age. Since Dunne, this approach has been augmented by the
use of low or null pitching moment airfoils, seen for example in the Horten series of
sailplanes and fighters.

 Use a wing aerofoil section with reflex or reverse camber. With reflex camber the flatter
side of the wing is on top, and the strongly curved side is on the bottom, so the front
section presents a high angle of attack while the back section is more or less horizontal
and contributes no lift, so acting like a tailplane or the washed-out tips of a swept wing.
Reflex camber can be simulated by fitting large elevators to a conventional airfoil and
trimming them noticeably upwards; the center of gravity must also be moved forward of
the usual position. Due to the Bernoulli effect, reflex camber tends to create a small
downthrust, so the angle of attack of the wing is increased to compensate. This in turn
creates additional drag. This method allows a wider choice of wing planform than
sweepback and washout, and designs have included circular (Arup) and straight wings.
But the drag inherent in a high angle of attack is generally regarded as making the
concept inefficient, and only a few types, such as the Fauvel and Marske Aircraft series
of sailplanes, use it.

An alternative approach is to locate the main weight of the aircraft a significant distance below
the wing center, so that gravity will tend to maintain the aircraft in a horizontal attitude and so
counteract any aerodynamic instability. In practice this is not sufficient to provide stability on its
own, and typically is augmented by sweepback and washout as described. A classic example is
the Rogallo wing hang glider.
There is a trade-off between stability and maneuverability. A high level of maneuverability
requires a low level of stability. Some modern hi-tech combat aircraft are aerodynamically
unstable in pitch and rely on fly-by-wire computer control to provide stability. The Northrop B-2
Spirit flying wing is an example.

[edit] Pitch control

Many early designs failed to provide effective pitch control to compensate for the missing
stabiliser. As a result, these aircraft could pitch up or down sharply and uncontrollably if they
were not carefully handled. These gave tailless designs a reputation for instability. The original
Dunne biplanes and the later success of the tailless delta configuration show that the problem
was due as much to inadequate design, as to any problem inherent in the tailless configuration.

The solution usually adopted is to provide large elevator and/or elevon (combined elevator and
aileron) surfaces on the wing trailing edge. These must generate large control forces, as their
distance from the aerodynamic center is small. Consequently, when maneuvring, a tailless type
may suffer higher drag than the conventional equivalent, even though it has less drag in level
flight. High maneuvrability demands high control moments (force times "lever arm" distance),
and the short lever arm inherent in tailless types means they are not as manoeuvrable as their
conventional equivalents.