Roll control

Roll control has traditionally been provided by means of ailerons on the outboard section of the wings, as illustrated in Fig. 10.10. The ailerons are operated differentially; that is one goes up as the other goes down. The differ­ence in effective camber on the two wings causes a difference in lift, and hence, a rolling moment.

On the Wright Flyer and other early aircraft, ailerons were not used. Instead, the whole wing was warped differentially, by using an ingenious arrangement of wires. Wing warping is an efficient method of control, as there is no dis­continuity in the wing geometry. Its use was discontinued when the speed of aircraft increased, and they began to encounter problems due to unwanted distortion of surfaces, as described later. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the use of wing warping, because composite materials enable the stiffness to be controlled accurately.