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Supragility and super agility aircraft

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DangerZone

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 5, 2011
Messages
2,307
Location
Zagreb HR
Asuming that most people know about supermaneuverability of some modern jet fighters, I wondered if there might be some information about supragility aircraft on the internet available?

Supermaneuverability relates to aircraft which maintain control and manoeuvering ability in exceeding what is possible by pure aerodynamic machnisms. Super agility goes beyond that, it means taking advantage of the aircraft body/design/technology to improve performance by taking advantage of effects which this supermaneuverability uses at low speeds, making the aircraft a better performer at greater velocities too. Supragility is a term I thought would be better for aircraft which have improved performance even in situations which are disadvantagous for other aircraft, for example having great additional performance during the stall or when flying backwards. A Pugatchev Cobra is an example of familiar supermaneuverability in which an aircraft can fly controlably backwards for a short period of time. An analogy best describing the features would be the difference between a gymnast and a runner. A gymnast can sprint, spin, flip, handwalk or do something inverted in similar acrobatics and always finishes moves/jumps in a controlled position while a runner hardly ever uses the advantage of acrobatics. Since developing such platforms/aircraft is fairly new, there is limited reading resources on the internet. I am looking for sources in English, French, German and Italian since these are the languages I understand, but Russian could also be a good source with the modern translation tools.

My interest is supersonic homebuilt airframes which can handle supragility performance. In other words, compensating size for performance: the smaller/lighter the airframe with a certain powerplant the better the performance and thrust to weight ratio. There are different approaches concerning supermaneuverability in the USA, Europe and in the East and it surprised me that sometimes one region would consider something impossible which might be performed in another area. For example, the Herbst maneuver is considered to be impossible without thrust vectoring yet it can be achieved without it if one has insight to a different perspective. Hook turns with higher than 20Gs are also considered impossible, so are controlled yaw spins or Bells, the Pugatchev Cobra was also considered by many as a trick for some time, there are quite a few examples in recent history. Works like the phD of Antony Kutchera or Darrol Stinton books/articles are a bit limited to moder jet fighters and similar sizes of aircraft, so it is hard to find good resources with smaller and faster liquid propelled aircraft. Has anyone stumbled upon books/articles/research which would be interesting for the field of a small homebuilt supragility aircraft?

Since this idea relates to new deisgns and technology, the internet is a bit limited in resources. If anyone knows where to find additional info feel free to share or send a private message. It seems there are mentions of supermaneuverability but if super agility or supragility go under a different name in English written research, it would be good to know.

Supermaneuverability - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
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