24th Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 29 August-3, September 2004, Yokohama, Japan
Paper ICAS 2004-4.10.3

EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL STUDIES OF AUTOGYRO FIGHT DYNAMICS

D. Thomson, S. Houston
Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Keywords: autogyro, stability, simulation, flight testing

A comprehensive flight dynamics study of the autogyro is presented in this paper. A state of the art generic simulation of the vehicle type was developed and validated against flight data. This validation is presented in the paper and it is shown that the model can be applied to the autogyro with some confidence within well defined limitations bounds. It is also shown that the general stability characteristics of the autogyro can be considered as a mix of helicopter and fixed wing aircraft modes of flight.

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