Multi-Axis Maneuver Design for Aircraft Parameter Estimation

A flight test campaign for system identification is a time and cost consuming task. Models derived from wind tunnel experiments and CFD calculations must be validated and/or updated with flight data in order to match the real aircraft stability and control characteristics. Classical maneuvers for system identification are mostly one-surface-at-time inputs and need to be performed several times at each flight condition. Multi-surface or multi-axis maneuvers have been designed in the past, however, they are only time or frequency decorrelated. Therefore, a new design method based on the wavelet transform was developed that allows to define multi-axis inputs in the time-frequency domain. Using such inputs, simulated flight test data was generated from a high-quality Airbus A320 dynamic model. System identification was then performed with this data and the results show that accurate aerodynamic parameters can be extracted from these multi-axis maneuvers