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Aviation glossary

Dynamic Stability

What is dynamic stability?

Illustration related to dynamic stability
Image: Theotetm — CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Dynamic stability describes how an aircraft responds over time after being disturbed from straight-and-level flight—specifically, whether the oscillations that follow eventually die out, stay the same, or grow larger. With positive dynamic stability, those back-and-forth motions gradually decrease until the aircraft settles back to its original condition. Think of it as the "over time" partner to static stability: static stability is the aircraft's initial tendency to return, while dynamic stability is what happens to the wobbles along the way.

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