Innovative Techniques of Modeling and Simulation for Commercial Derivative Aircraft Upset Recovery

The National Transportation Safety Board's accident database reveals that up to 40% of all commercial aviation fatalities are due to loss of control. The military is acquiring commercial-derivative aircraft for certain missions, and will fly these aircraft more aggressively, increasing the potential for loss-of-control accidents. The main options available for obtaining aerodynamic derivatives outside the normal flight envelope include Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), wind tunnel testing, and flight testing. CTSi has proposed an innovative methodology to develop the needed aerodynamic database extensions by flight testing a scaled model UAV. This model replicates the dynamic response of the full-scale aircraft. New state-of-the-art methods in System Identification are used to extract the aerodynamic derivatives in upset conditions. The certified aerodynamic database is then appended using a new state-of-the-art automated procedure that guarantees a statistically-optimal blending of the multiple sources of aerodynamic data. Our method is self-contained and can be used by itself; and is also complementary to and compatible with aerodynamic data derived from CFD or wind tunnel tests.