RCU Forums - View Single Post - What would a negative dihedral do?
View Single Post
Old 06-20-2004 | 12:26 AM
  #5  
JimTrainor
Senior Member
 
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 1,309
Likes: 0
Received 1 Like on 1 Post
From: Ontario, ON, CANADA
Default RE: What would a negative dihedral do?

It would be more like a low wing airplane flying upside down than a trainer flying upside down.

A trainer flying upside is completely unstable in that position. It "wants" to flip over... that's the whole point, actually.

The fuselange of a low wing plane is like an inverted pendulum - it wants to fall over. The wing has dihedral to counter the effect of the inverted pendulum so that the net stability is neutral, or slightly positive. Flip it over (fly it inverted), and you get the trainer with anhedral. Taking the dihedral out of a low wing plan can move it from being nuetrally stable to negatively. Dihedral has to be balanced against other effects.

Here some interesting info on the subject presented by Ed Moorman, who posts here on RCU:
http://members.cox.net/moorman1/ProjectJoss.htm