Longitudinal Aerodynamic Parameter Identification for Blended-Wing-Body Aircraft Based on a Wind Tunnel Virtual Flight Test

Abstract

The wind tunnel virtual flight test realizes the dynamic semi-free flight of the model in the wind tunnel through the deflections of the control surface and uses the test data to identify the aerodynamic derivatives. The difference in dynamics between the wind tunnel virtual flight and the free flight leads to discrepancies between the identification and theoretical results. To solve the problems, a step-by-step identification and correction method for aerodynamic derivatives is established based on the difference between the equations of motion of wind tunnel virtual flight and free flight to identify and correct the lift, drag derivatives, pitch moment derivatives, and velocity derivatives, respectively. To establish an aerodynamic parameter identification model, the flight dynamics equation is expressed as a decoupled form of the free flight force and the influence of the test support frame force on the model’s motions through linearization. To ensure the identification accuracy of each aerodynamic derivative, an excitation signal design method based on amplitude–frequency characteristic analysis is proposed. The longitudinal aerodynamic parameter identification results of a blended-wing-body aircraft show that identification results with higher accuracy can be obtained by adopting the proposed identification and correction method.

Keywords

• wind tunnel virtual flight test
• parameter identification
• least-squares method
• maximum likelihood estimation
• blended-wing-body