Abstracts Category : Other

Experimental analysis of paper plane flight characteristics

by Natalia Cook

Although the concept of paper planes appears at first straight forward, understanding how the best planes can be made is a difficult and dynamic problem. They possess unstable aerodynamics, and beyond the point of launch they experience entirely uncontrolled flight. These factors compound to create a problem without a simple formulaic answer. The purpose of this project was to reach a scientific understanding of how paper aeroplanes behave, and the design characteristics required to attain predictable flight trajectories. A series of rigorous scientific experiments was established in order to gain insight into the behaviour of paper aeroplanes. After assessing the literature available that pertained to both the flight mechanisms of real aircraft and paper aircraft, it was determined that the best approach to the problem would be to iteratively test the design characteristics linked to the stability modes longitudinal, directional and lateral associated with flight. A total of twenty plane designs were tested with measurements taken of their distance and air time, which were used to characterise each designs overall performance. Of these designs, the best performing were analysed to determine which of their design characteristics contributed to their superior performance. The findings of this analysis suggested a strong correlation between the fuselage depth and the flight performance of the tested paper planes. The fuselage depth is linked to both longitudinal and directional stability modes, however observations of the flight performance suggest the longitudinal mode contributes the greatest to the flight characteristics. A simulation of the flight of the best performing paper plane was developed using a series of equations of motion established by Stengel (2004). These equations were calibrated in order to better match the experimental results. It was recommended that further study expound upon the relationship found between the fuselage depth and the flight performance of the planes, in particular in scenarios outside the scope of this report. It was also recommended that other plane designs be modelled by the simulation code in order to determine if the calibration used could be linked to specific design characteristics.