G-force conundrum I think

[Triggster]

How do I make my aircrafts wings more sustainable when doing high-g maneuvers at fast speed

[king of nowhere]

42 minutes ago, Triggster said:

How do I make my aircrafts wings more sustainable when doing high-g maneuvers at fast speed

autostruts is pretty much the only thing I can think of

[swjr-swis]

2 hours ago, Triggster said:

How do I make my aircrafts wings more sustainable when doing high-g maneuvers at fast speed

The wings getting sheared off on fast and/or large attitude changes are due to a number of different things, each needing their own mitigations.

• Lever. Very likely *the* number one cause for structural failure, because it multiplies -rapidly- the effect of the forces that happen in high G maneuvers. Try to be conscious of how large of a lever there is between the wing (piece)'s attachment point and the point where the game calculates dynamic pressure on it. If you succeed in keeping those small, your plane will survive longer.
• Joint elasticity. Yes, strength is important too, but from my experience it's near impossible to get kerbal joints strong enough on pure strength. Why does elasticity help? Because the angle of the veering wing (section) to the vector of aerodynamic forces can change just enough for it to stay within tolerance. Confucius say: the stalk that bows in the wind does not break. Otherwise stated: (auto)strut too much and it will shatter like porcelain.
• Lift area. When aiming for structurally sound planes in extreme maneuvers, you need to make a choice. Deliberately under-'lift' your wing to keep lift area (and thus range of possible aerodynamic forces) low and outside ranges that would risk it. Or deliberately over-lift. So much lift area that when you do make a fast and/or large enough attitude change, it will -by design- slow down your plane fast enough before it goes past tolerances. There's a very risky corridor in between where too much speed for too long means gone with the wind.

At this point I apologize to Confucius for continually misquoting him. And I apologize to all those of you who have made an actual study and or job out of aerodynamics. I claim no expertise, merely experimentally derived practical knowledge of how the kerbal physics work.

[swjr-swis]

A more practical response perhaps. Make it something like this:

The angle, deliberately chosen more for ease of controlling and landing the plane at the end than to show it off, kind of conceals it. But those wings lurch quite a bit on the 144.6 G (!) turn.

Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/swjr-swis/SpeedyReturn-2

It was built and flown in 1.3.1, but it should perform near-identically in 1.12.5. And of course it doesn't require the gantry for kerbal loading anymore. Feel free to tear it apart for your benefit.

 

[Triggster]

I kind of fixed it by just turning slowly