In-Flight Test Campaign to Validate PIO Detection and Assessment Tools

This paper describes a joint research campaign conducted by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the National Research Council Canada (NRC) to explore methods and techniques to expose rotorcraft pilot-induced oscillations (PIOs) during flight testing. A flight test campaign was conducted at NRC usi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Michael Jones, Marc Alexander, Marc Höfinger, Miles Barnett, Perry Comeau, Arthur Gubbels
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2020-09-01
Series:Aerospace
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/7/9/136
Description
Summary:This paper describes a joint research campaign conducted by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the National Research Council Canada (NRC) to explore methods and techniques to expose rotorcraft pilot-induced oscillations (PIOs) during flight testing. A flight test campaign was conducted at NRC using the Bell 205 experimental aircraft. Results show that, particularly for the lateral axis, ADS-33 tasks can be successfully applied to expose PIO tendencies. Novel subjective and objective criteria were used during the test campaign. PIO prediction boundaries of the objective phase-aggression criteria (PAC) detection algorithm were validated through results obtained. This was the first use of PAC with data recorded in-flight. To collect subjective feedback, the aircraft–pilot coupling (APC) scale was used. This was the first use of the novel scale in-flight and received favourable feedback from the evaluation pilot. Modifications to ADS-33 mission tasks were found to successfully improve the ability to consistently expose PIOs.
ISSN:2226-4310