How Airframe Scale Affects Flight Dynamic Modes

Scaling present opportunities to adapt existing airframes to specific mission parameters. Different airframe sizes posses differing behavior. This paper investigates modal behavior of fixed-wing airframes using geometric scaling methods. Confirmation of stability is concluded with Routh-Hurwitz and behavior of poles, natural frequency and damping ratio calculated via state-space models for lateral and longitudinal dynamics. Results conclude that geometric scaling with defined mass significantly affects dynamic modes of an aircraft, with one scaling method showing behavior as a multiplicative function and another showing instability with scale.