Micro- and Partial Gravity Atmospheric Flight

Abstract

This paper presents a study on a possible control concept for micro-or partial gravity flight of conventional aircraft that can be implemented in any aircraft with a minimum in effort. The method makes use of a conventional pitch rate controller to track the continuously changing pitch rate along the desired micro-or partial gravity trajectory. As a first step towards automatic flight this principle is used to design a micro-and partial gravity flight director. The flight director has been experimentally evaluated in a fixed base manned simulation and its performance checked against other flight director principles. Pilots unanimously pointed out this flight director as their favorite one and it also showed the best performance. A baseline version will be implemented and flight-tested in the Delft University Cessna Citation research aircraft in the near future.