Wind Profile Estimation during Flight Path Reconstruction

Abstract

Accuracy of flow angles measurements becomes crucial as the aircraft approaches higher angle of attack. Flight path reconstruction (FPR) is an excellent tool for air data calibration. An important element of air data calibration is the estimation of wind velocities. The objective of this paper is to evaluate different approaches of wind estimation within the framework of FPR. Flight test data of a high performance aircraft is subjected to FPR and the estimated wind velocities and flow angle trajectories are presented and discussed to demonstrate the impact of wind estimation on aircraft flow angles. Results clearly show that accuracy of reconstructed flow angles improves when time varying wind models are used. The proposed analytical wind model is found to be as effective as augmented parameters in Extended Kalman filter and computationally less intensive.