Technical Measures Perspectives in Selection of Handling Qualities Criteria for Flight Control Design

Abstract

AbstractThe requirements of satisfactory pilot‐vehicle interaction in high workload precision flying tasks plays a very important and dominant role in the design of flight control systems. Based on the extensive flight test experience, quantitative handling qualities specifications to aid control law design have been derived and documented in relevant MIL Standards. In this paper an attempt is made to demonstrate methodology used for validation of Handling Qualities (HQ) requirements for a HighPerformance fighter Aircraft (HPA) using technical measurements in systems engineering i.e. Measure of effectiveness (MOE), Measure of performance (MOP) and Technical performance measure (TPM) as defined by INCOSE.A mission requirement such as Air to Air Refueling (AAR) is considered as a user need in qualitative form and is mapped to MOE as an indicator of achieving the operational objective. The MOPs are arrived from the handling quality specifications from MIL standards for the flight control design. TPMs enable an assessment of the system design by estimating the values of key performance parameters of the design through engineering analyses and tests.A piloted evaluation is performed for the given mission requirement. The flight data together with pilot comments on aircraft handling qualities are assessed to identify any mismatch between predicted HQ versus piloted evaluation which leads to iteration of flight control laws. Thereby, the use of technical measures keeps track of requirements to be met while maintain desired system performance as well anticipate any risk and mitigate the same during early stage of design cycle.