Part 7 of “Aspects of Aircraft Design and Control”

Lec­ture 7 — Air­craft Trim
Project 7 — Air­craft Trim

The aim of this project was to explore the con­cept of lon­gi­tu­di­nal equi­lib­ri­um (“trim”) in flight, and the ways in which it can or can­not be attained in prac­tice. The lec­ture far exceeds what is required to solve the prob­lem and indulges into a dis­cus­sion of the design choic­es, pilot tech­nique, and human inter­ac­tion facets of the top­ic. The result of the inter­ac­tion of two pas­sion­ate close friends, the ses­sion was the most suc­cess­ful of the course.

The lec­ture was one of two parts. My objec­tive was to explore trim thor­ough­ly in this ses­sion before div­ing into lon­gi­tu­di­nal sta­bil­i­ty in the fol­low­ing, eighth and final ses­sion. It was a wise propo­si­tion and I think the dis­tinc­tion between the two con­cepts —which both are affect­ed by the same para­me­ters— real­ly came through.

The ses­sion starred long-time friend and air­line pilot Hamas­sala David Dicko. We pre­pared the lec­ture and project togeth­er over three days, and shared the session.
David focused on the top­ic of trim from the point of view of the pilot (as we found out, pilots and engi­neers do not even define trim in the same way!), explain­ing how things are felt and account­ed for in the cock­pit. It was a fan­tas­tic con­tri­bu­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in a dis­cus­sion about the human/machine inter­ac­tion impli­ca­tions of the trim man­age­ment automa­tion on airliners.
I also learned a lot from David by see­ing him inter­act­ing with the stu­dents in a way I had not thought was pos­si­ble. This prompt­ed very inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions after­wards and I think I will improve great­ly in this regard.

The part I took charge of is a very basic quan­ti­ta­tive intro­duc­tion to trim. The equa­tions are cer­tain­ly intim­i­dat­ing, and I took care in class to focus us all on the impor­tant parts only. Despite the minor caveats, things went well.

The project is not exact­ly bril­liant — to me it is more of a rid­dle than a true learn­ing frame­work. Giv­en the time invest­ed in the prepa­ra­tion for the lec­ture, the length of the in-class ses­sion, and the con­text with­in the course (this was the sev­enth week and sixth dead­line day in a row), I think this can be for­giv­en. I will try to re-mold it entire­ly this year.

Over­all, not even with­stand­ing the sheer joy of work­ing with my good friend, the ses­sion was the high­light of the course and a suc­cess by almost any met­ric, includ­ing the most impor­tant of all, stu­dent moti­va­tion and enjoy­ment. I am look­ing for­ward to invit­ing David again =)