Flight Techniques

The book presents a synopsis of the main results achieved during the 3 year EU-project "Advanced Inflight Measurement Techniques (AIM)" which applied advanced image based measurement techniques to industrial flight testing. The book is intended to be not only an overview on the AIM activities but also a guide on the application of advanced optical measurement techniques for future flight testing. Furthermore it is a useful guide for engineers in the field of experimental methods and flight testing who face the challenge of a future requirement for the development of highly accurate non-intrusive in-flight measurement techniques.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer an incomparable means of gathering intelligence and carrying out missions without needing an onboard human pilot. The benefits are considerable in terms of cost, efficiency, and reduced pilot risk.

The problem of fault diagnosis and reconfigurable control is a new and actually developing field of science and engineering. The subject becomes more interesting since there is an increasing demand for the navigation and control systems of aerospace vehicles, automated actuators etc. to be more safe and reliable.

Computer vision entails both passive and active illumination techniques. Whereas passive techniques observe the scene statically and analyse it as is, by contrast active techniques give the scene some actions and try to facilitate the analysis. In particular, active illumination techniques project specific light, for which the characteristics are known beforehand, to a target scene to enable stable and accurate analysis of the scene.

Manual flight control system design for fighter aircraft is one of the most demanding problems in automatic control. Fighter aircraft dynamics generally have highly coupled uncertain and nonlinear dynamics. Multivariable control design techniques offer a solution to this problem. Robust Multivariable Flight Control provides the background, theory and examples for full envelope manual flight control system design. It gives a versatile framework for the application of advanced multivariable control theory to aircraft control problems. Two design case studies are presented for the manual flight control of lateral/directional axes of the VISTA-F-16 test vehicle and an F-18 trust vectoring system. They demonstrate the interplay between theory and the physical features of the systems.