Abstract
The establishment of the Aircraft Dynamic Model (ADM) constitutes the prerequisite for the design of the navigation and control system, but the aerodynamic parameters in the model could not be readily obtained especially for small-scaled fixed-wing UAVs. In this paper, the procedure of computing the aerodynamic parameters is developed. All the longitudinal and lateral aerodynamic derivatives are firstly calculated through semi-empirical method based on the aerodynamics, rather than the wind tunnel tests or fluid dynamics software analysis. Secondly, the residuals of each derivative are proposed to be identified or estimated further via Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), with the observations of the attitude and velocity from the airborne integrated navigation system. Meanwhile, the observability of the targeted parameters is analyzed and strengthened through multiple maneuvers. Based on a small-scaled fixed-wing aircraft driven by propeller, the airborne sensors are chosen and the model of the actuators are constructed. Then, real flight tests are implemented to verify the calculation and identification process. Test results tell the rationality of the semi-empirical method and show the improvement of accuracy of ADM after the compensation of the parameters.
Highlights
In contrast to the large-scaled high-altitude long-term Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for remote surveillance and combat, the small-scaled fixed-wing UAVs, like “Raven” RQ-11 and SandHawk of the US, or “Rainbow-802” of China, have unique superiority in civilian and military fields.With the light weight, small volume and simple take-off, small UAVs could execute tasks like the close-range monitoring in a covert and flexible way [1]
By comparing with the INS/GPS navigation results, on one hand, the rationality of the aerodynamic parameters computed by the semi-empirical method will be proved, on the other hand, the effect of latter compensation process is verified, which is a unique method to validate the correctness of the calculation and identification results
The paper mainly studied the method of calculating the aerodynamic parameters of the small-scaled fixed-wing aircraft, and it is an important part in the establishment of the aircraft dynamic and kinematic model
Summary
In contrast to the large-scaled high-altitude long-term Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for remote surveillance and combat, the small-scaled fixed-wing UAVs, like “Raven” RQ-11 and Sand. The aerodynamic analysis of small-scaled aircrafts is often simplified for quite small Mach number, plain aerodynamic structure and small angle-of-attack assumption This kind semi-empirical method could rationally calculate the initial parameters in a small amount of computation with low cost and it will be adopted in the paper. Morelli [20] focuses on the aerodynamic model identification of the combat aircraft like F-16 using MLE in the frequency domain, and the measurements used are the 6 outputs of the IMU and the aerodynamic states like Va , α and β, which requires high-precision IMUs and expensive sensors for α, β detection.
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