Dutch roll

Dutch roll is a type of aircraft motion, consisting of an out-of-phase combination of "tail-wagging" and rocking from side to side. This yaw-roll coupling is one of the basic flight dynamic modes (others include phugoid, short period, and spiral divergence). This motion is normally well damped in most light aircraft, though some aircraft with well-damped Dutch roll modes can experience a degradation in damping as airspeed decreases and altitude increases. Dutch roll stability can be artificially increased by the installation of a yaw damper. Wings placed well above the center of mass, sweepback (swept wings) and dihedral wings tend to increase the roll restoring force, and therefore increase the Dutch roll tendencies; this is why high-winged aircraft often are slightly anhedral, and transport-category swept-wing aircraft are equipped with yaw dampers.

In aircraft design, Dutch roll results from relatively weaker positive directional stability as opposed to positive lateral stability. When an aircraft rolls around the longitudinal axis, a sideslip is introduced into the relative wind in the direction of the rolling motion. Strong lateral stability begins to restore the aircraft to level flight. At the same time, somewhat weaker directional stability attempts to correct the sideslip by aligning the aircraft with the perceived relative wind. Since directional stability is weaker than lateral stability for the particular aircraft, the restoring yaw motion lags significantly behind the restoring roll motion. As such, the aircraft passes through level flight as the yawing motion is continuing in the direction of the original roll. At that point, the sideslip is introduced in the opposite direction and the process is reversed.