Inflight Parameter Estimation based on Output Error Method

Francisco Carvalho Neto¹; Elder Moreira Hemerly¹; Celso Braga de Mendonça²

¹ Aeronautics Institute of Technology; ² Empresa Brasileira de Aeronáutica

doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-2215

Resumo

This paper aims at performing a feasibility analysis of an inflight aircraft parameter estimation method. By inflight is meant iterative estimation during the flight maneuvers execution, but without a real-time processing constraints. Based on the time domain Maximum Likelihood Estimation principle, the Output Error Method was selected for parameter estimation. The proposed inflight parameter estimation method is based on a predefined model and searches for an optimal set of longitudinal motion parameters that describes an already known aircraft longitudinal dynamics. This is a necessary first step, since the estimated parameters can be compared to the true ones. Inflight parameter estimation can bring significant savings in time and fuel consumption to flight test campaigns, providing quantitative results of the parameter estimation accuracies to the flight test engineer and pilots. Hence, quicker decision about when to terminate the flight tests can be made.

Palavras-chave: Inflight Estimation; Output Error Method; Flight Tests