Method of Calculating the Lateral Motions of Aircraft Based on the Laplace Transform

The lateral motions of aircraft are obtained by means of the Laplace transform which gives solutions expressed in terms of elementary functions for the free and forced motions. These equations permit the calculation of the free motion of an aircraft following any initial condition or the forced motion following the application of constant external forces and moments. These forced motions can be used to obtain by means of Duhamel's integral the response to any arbitrary forcing function. All the classical stability concepts can be deduced from these same solution equations largely by inspection. These equations for the lateral motion are applied to the calculation of the lateral stability of a specific airplane and to the calculation of certain of its free and forced motions.