Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ase305 Unit 06
Ase305 Unit 06
• Rudder lock occurs when the force on a deflected rudder (in a steady
sideslip) suddenly reverses as the vertical stabilizer stalls. This may
leave the rudder stuck at full deflection with the pilot unable to
recenter it.
• Rudder lock requires a mechanical linkage between the rudder pedals and
the rudder. With no force on the pedals, the rudder will then weathervane
(float) into an equilibrium position that depends on the sideslip angle and
the hinge moment coefficients of that particular rudder.
• With enough sideslip angle the rudder will hit its deflection limits and stop
to move further. If the sideslip angle still increases, the difference between
the maximum deflection and the theoretical floating angle (if there were
no mechanical stops) will determine the aerodynamic force by which the
rudder is pressed into the stops.
• At this point the rudder will exhibit fully separated flow on its leeward side,
but that only changes the hinge moment derivatives and the resulting
floating angle. Normally, the ratio between the change in sideslip angle and
the resulting change in floating angle is less that one for small angles but
increases above one for larger angles. This means that the rudder will
experience a steep hinge moment increase for small increases of the
sideslip angle once it has reached its maximum deflection.
Dorsal fin
This can lead to a lot of negative effects aside from the thrust loss
that occurs.