Horizontal Thrust Vectoring-How Hard Can It Be?

Constantly I hear things about single-plane thrust vectoring, the up-and-down (longitudal?). Then I hear people say that it is much harder to have 2 dimensional thrust vectoring. Yaw and Pitch, for example. I find it difficult to belive that the ideas for vertical thrust vectoring cannot apply to horizontal. A bit of a shape change for the vector surfaces, but it isn't even close to impossible.

Evolved Idea: Have pneumatic/hydraulic pistons (6 or 8) connected to a loose outlet at the back of the engine. Retract or extend certain pistons to provide a direction change for the thrust. Instant 360 degree thrust vectoring and WVR advantage. Haven't the Russians had this on a Su or MiG at one point?

Now you see the things I have thought about. Now the ultimate question: What big problems facing today's top minds have I completely missed?

Originally posted by Darkpr0
Constantly I hear things about single-plane thrust vectoring, the up-and-down (longitudal?). Then I hear people say that it is much harder to have 2 dimensional thrust vectoring. Yaw and Pitch, for example. I find it difficult to belive that the ideas for vertical thrust vectoring cannot apply to horizontal. A bit of a shape change for the vector surfaces, but it isn't even close to impossible.

Evolved Idea: Have pneumatic/hydraulic pistons (6 or 8) connected to a loose outlet at the back of the engine. Retract or extend certain pistons to provide a direction change for the thrust. Instant 360 degree thrust vectoring and WVR advantage. Haven't the Russians had this on a Su or MiG at one point?

Now you see the things I have thought about. Now the ultimate question: What big problems facing today's top minds have I completely missed?

360 thrust vectoring has been around for a while.

orca, I'm just waiting for that whole-post quote to be scrubbed

360 vectoring would be great, and I really can't think of any major design problems that would have to be overcome; but that's just me, and me doesn't have an aerospace engineering degree.

the rule of thumb I like to go by is give it enough power(force/thrust) and anything will fly.
But I too do not have any engineering degrees.

www.laesieworks.com...

It would be fun to try to build a scale downed version of the silverbug to experiment with.

www.cufon.org...

Sure it would cost a few grand, but it could be like a RC millenium falcon!

[edit on 21-5-2006 by Low Orbit]

Uhh, the Su-30 MKI, the MiG-29 OVT and the Su-35 all have 3D TVC, as did the S-37.

The F-15 ACTIVE and the X-31 also had 3D TVC



Anyone know did the MiG 1.42/1.44 have TVC?

I don't think the Mikoyan Product 1.44 had 360 TVM. If this is so easy to do, why didn't the all-mighty Raptor have such things?

BTW excellent comment, whoever said that with enough thrust anything will fly. This is completely true. WWI and WWII had wings and such for lift. Today they're for control surfaces. Today's planes are effectively guys sitting on engines with guns attatched. Basically rockets lol. That's why my unc said, he's got an engineering degree, so I'm inclined to trust him.

Originally posted by Darkpr0
I don't think the Mikoyan Product 1.44 had 360 TVM. If this is so easy to do, why didn't the all-mighty Raptor have such things?



BTW excellent comment, whoever said that with enough thrust anything will fly. This is completely true. WWI and WWII had wings and such for lift. Today they're for control surfaces. Today's planes are effectively guys sitting on engines with guns attatched. Basically rockets lol. That's why my unc said, he's got an engineering degree, so I'm inclined to trust him

.

F-22 didn't as it was much more complicated to make the nozzles stealthy, and to keep weight down. With the way the convergent-divergent duct on the F-22 was designed, 2-D TVC came virtually free of weight penalties.


Well.... kinda, the T/W ratio of all current fighters is still less than 1 when they are not using afterburners. Also, if you were using all your thrust to stay in the air, you wouldn't be moving forward very fast. With enough thrust anything will fly, but properly designed, it would fly much better

I was thinkin about it myself, It could maybe help the pilot survive flat spins?

Maybe it could do extremely quick turns and spins in the air and survive incoming missiles

I was thinking about using this on the F-19A Specter which is a delta winged plane and has fixed front canards like the SAAB 37 Viggen. The front canards will do the job of pulling up and down quicker and the Horizontal VT will help the plane turning quicker

The loading on these directional baffle things must be huge -- I mean really huge. In theory it would seem relatively easy to move several segmented baffle things to create 2 dimensional thrust vectoring. But start applying the force from a jet engine directly onto them and it would need to be quite a substantial structure. Anything that can move in two planes is very difficult to build strength into -- think a CV joint.
I personally think that the temperature generated from the jet engines would count out using hydraulics anywhere near them BTW.
But like others here I am not an Aeronautical Engineer just a plain Mechanical Engineer.

Originally posted by Browno
I was thinkin about it myself, It could maybe help the pilot survive flat spins?

That is an excellent thought, I hadn't actually thought about the safety it could give. It would be an interesting maneuver to initiate a flatspin after a missile's near miss, enemy thinks you're dead, pull out at low level, make getaway.

Something like the Harrier is not at all what I am thinking of here-The Harrier was nice for its time but now it's just been beaten down by other planes in combat. Besides, the RAH-66 looks better than the Harrier.

Originally posted by Browno
I was thinkin about it myself, It could maybe help the pilot survive flat spins?

Uhh, well you can just use 2D TVC to point the nose down, that'll make the spin effectively a barrel roll, which the wings will quickly damp out.