AER324 Aircraft Dynamics and Control
Practical Flight Course Assignment

Assignment Weighting: 40%
Assignment Released: 5 February 2021
Due Date: 23.55 midnight, 25 April 2021, at the end of week 8
Submission
You should submit your course work (CW) assignment in electronic form only on Blackboard
(MOLE), the due date with an appropriate cover sheet created by you. Please name the file with
your report for the submission on Blackboard to be the same as your ID number, e.g.
CW_1101133888.
Penalties for Late Submission: Late submissions will incur the usual penalties of a 5%
reduction in the mark for every working day (or part thereof) that the assignment is late and a
mark of zero for submission more than 5 days late.
Feedback Date: approximately three weeks after the submission.

Assignment
Following the flight course you should produce a brief write up (no more than 2000 words upper
limit) of approximately detailing the following:
 Why is it important to assess the longitudinal static stability of an aircraft and what
conditions must the aircraft satisfy to be longitudinally statically stable;
 Using data and appropriate graphs, comment on the longitudinal static stability of the
aircraft;
 Why is it important to assess the longitudinal manoeuvre stability of an aircraft and
 Comment on how useful and important you believe flight testing is in practise for the
design of aircraft compared to other approaches (e.g. simulation and wind tunnel testing).
You should look at the mark sheet for hints on what to include. It is recommended that you
include data (and graphs) to justify your comments. You should also use data from other
groups’ and show results from 3 data sets at least.
Your report needs to start with a cover sheet, where you indicate your ID number. You may
structure the write up in any way you think is most appropriate but it should include a brief
introduction (that introduces the report and outlines its content) and concluding remarks (which
will summarise the key points of the report and also cover your comments on the usefulness of
flight testing). Include diagrams where it is appropriate. A suggested structure for the report is:
1. Introduction
2. Longitudinal static stability – stick fixed and stick free cases
3. Demonstrate understanding of manoeuvre stability
4. Conclusions (how useful flight testing is and an overall summary)
Note that appendices should not be included as they will not be marked. All relevant
information should be in the main body of the report (appendices should only be used in general
for additional information that is not necessary to understand the main report but maybe of
additional interest).
Use the Handbook for the Practical Flight Test for completing your assignment.

Marking Criteria
Please see attached marking criteria – this is the mark sheet that will be used to assess the
assignment. The mark sheet indicates the marks available for each part of the assignment and
also indicates some of the factors that will be used in assessing the assignment. It is strongly
recommended that you study this mark sheet before completing the assignment. This
assignment will contribute up to 40% of the overall mark for AER324.
An excellent report shows:
 a concise summary of the main theoretical background knowledge and a related
discussion of the observed during the test
 understanding and critical analysis of the results, e.g. explains the locations of all neutral
points (calculated from the given data). Many of the questions to answer are summarised
in the booklet for the flight test course.
 ability of independent work and demonstration of a broad view on flight testing and
aircraft stability.
 structure, a cover page, a content page, final conclusions
 maximum report limit: 2000 words

Note that the cover page, content page, image captions and references are not counted
towards the maximum word number.

Assessment
The attached mark sheet provides a guide to what the assessment criteria are.

Unfair Means
The assignment should be completed individually. You should not discuss the assignment with
other students and should not work together in completing the assignment. The assignment
must be wholly your own work. References must be provided to any other work that is used as
part of this assignment. Any suspicions of the use of unfair means will be investigated and may
lead to penalties. See https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/apse/digital/turnitin/unfairmeans for more
information.



Prof. Lyudmila Mihaylova
Email: l.s.mihaylova@sheffield.ac.uk
AER324 – Practical Flight Course Assignment Marking Form

Student …………………………………….............................................

This assignment contributes up to 40% of the overall mark for AER324.

Marking Criterion/Comments Marks
Compare Cessna 172 with Jetstream 31 and discuss how stability (longitudinal, directional
and lateral) is achieved by their design. Discuss also the control systems of the two
airplanes.




/20
Demonstrate what longitudinal static stability is, show appreciation and understanding of its
importance, factors that affect it. Give examples of static stability, how does this affect
aircraft. Give a brief theoretical background knowledge and explain the conditions with
examples.





/10
Present results with at least with three data sets that are given to you for Jetstream 31.
Discuss these results for longitudinal static stability of the aircraft. Show logical, well-
reasoned discussion, with relevant evidence to support your conclusions (e.g. with the
collected data and graphs). Show the neutral points for the stick-fixed and stick-free cases
of longitudinal static stability.






/30
Define shortly what manoeuvre stability is, why it is important. How do we assess
manoeuvre? Give a brief theoretical background knowledge. Give examples of aircrafts with
manoeuvre stability/ instability.




/10
Describe what flight testing is, how useful e.g. how logical and reasoned conclusions are,
are these based on suitable evidence.


/15
Quality of writing and presentation style: clarity, conciseness, structure, logical flow, figures
and tables, use of references.



/15
Total /100











Additional comments:




Prof. Lyudmila Mihaylova

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