On 8 Jan 2004, at 13:30, Jim Wilson wrote:
I think what you are trying to describe is called a "yaw damper". The purpose
of this is to dampen out accummulated yaw energy that can result in a growing
oscillation that will make your passengers sick (maybe even break/crash the
aircraft). AFAIK we are only talking about swept wing aircraft (jets), but I
could easily be wrong on that. Basically, I think you are right on how it
should work, but you might want to find out how it works in the real world
before deciding on an approach.
It would be nice to have that feature added to the autopilot code. Usually it
is activated on the ground and then turned off only to keep it from screwing
up any kick-out on landing. The activating/deactivating could be handled
manually or by an FMC module.
Uh, I think people are getting their wires crossed here; as I understand it, yaw dampers are a specific FCS module (or a totally separate thing) that counters dutch roll in straight-and-level flight. (It does this by driving part or all of the rudder).
What the original poster was talking about, was making the autopilot / FCS models of specific aircraft coordinate accurately in their turns, which is nothing to do with yaw damping, though it is to do with driving the rudder. This is different again (in principle) to the auto-coordination done by flightgear, since in the case being discussed, this is something the actual real aircraft system presumably also does. (whereas the FG thing is faking rudder inputs, I assume)
Given the description of the 'goal' for the problem (keep the ball centered), it does seem the idea of using some function of the yaw acceleration would give sensible results, but I am not a FCS designer....
H&H James
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