Introducing Microsoft’s new Enterprise Work Management (EWM) Solution
Flight Test Analysis Final
1. Flight Test Analysis
This is an introduction to MATLAB designed to accompany the Advanced Data Management telemetry demo.
This demo highlights some of the key aspects in the Technical Computing Workflow.
Maneuver Overview
A common maneuver in flight testing is the wind-up turn. The wind-up turn is a test maneuver that enables
calculation of "stick force per g", a measure of longitudinal stability.
Aircraft are designed to have some degree of longitudinal stability. Longitudinal stability is a measure of when
an aircraft is disturbed from a trimmed position, how likely it will return toward that same flight condition.
An aircraft with a high degree of longitudinal stability will be more difficult to move from the trim condition
than one with low stability. More pilot effort will be required to move the aircraft away from trim. Thus it will be
more difficult for the pilot to maneuver.
This example loads a data set from a wind-up turn and generates the time plots to explore the data. We
calculate "stick force per g" for the stable section of flight.
This is provided for example purposes only.
Load the Data
Read the flight test data into a table. We could read in with Import Tool, or for simple files just
call readtable.
d = readtable('FlightTestData.xlsx')
d = 800×7 table
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9. Time AirSpeed AoA BankAngle Elevator LoadFactor
92 12:45:04.55... 248.7584 2.3596 41.5665 -1.8645 1.0615
93 12:45:04.60... 248.7584 2.3645 41.6850 -1.8682 1.0615
94 12:45:04.65... 248.7584 2.3694 41.8034 -1.8727 1.0615
95 12:45:04.70... 248.7584 2.3690 41.9219 -1.8771 1.0616
96 12:45:04.75... 248.7584 2.3657 42.0403 -1.8815 1.0612
97 12:45:04.80... 248.7584 2.3625 42.1588 -1.8859 1.0631
98 12:45:04.85... 248.7584 2.3592 42.2772 -1.8903 1.0754
99 12:45:04.90... 248.7584 2.3559 42.3957 -1.8947 1.1016
100 12:45:04.95... 248.7584 2.3526 42.5142 -1.8992 1.1417
Verify Airspeed Stability
For this data to be useful, the airspeed must remain relatively constant throughout the maneuver. Visually
inspect the data to ensure we are within 5 knots during the smooth section, or within 10 knots during the stall
buffet.
Compare airspeed with load factor over the same flight regime. We again use interactive tools to customize
the display of the plots and generate MATLAB code to reproduce the exact appearance.
clf
plot(d.Time,d.AirSpeed)
yyaxis right
plot(d.Time,d.LoadFactor)
set(gca,'XGrid','on','YGrid','off')
legend({'Air Speed','Load Factor'})
title('Air Speed and Load Factor vs. Time')
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10. Subset Data
Take only the data after we have settled into the turn, and before the stall buffet begins. This is between
12:45:05 and 12:45:30. This uses a powerful subsetting syntax in MATLAB called logical indexing - the
second line of code keeps all of the rows of our table where sec is between 5 and 30 seconds.
sec = second(d.Time);
windup = d(sec > 05 & sec < 30, :)
windup = 499×7 table
Time AirSpeed AoA BankAngle Elevator LoadFactor
1 12:45:05.05... 248.7584 2.3611 42.7511 -1.9085 1.2481
2 12:45:05.10... 248.7584 2.3685 42.8695 -1.9177 1.3015
3 12:45:05.15... 248.7584 2.3759 42.9880 -1.9302 1.3447
4 12:45:05.20... 248.7600 2.3832 43.1064 -1.9421 1.3696
5 12:45:05.25... 248.7638 2.3906 43.2249 -1.9542 1.3773
6 12:45:05.30... 248.7677 2.3979 43.3433 -1.9663 1.3685
7 12:45:05.35... 248.7827 2.4053 43.4542 -1.9783 1.3528
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14. Compute Stability Margin
Plot Load Factor (g) verse Stick Force (lbs.) for the stable section of the flight, and compute the best fit line
for the region. The slope of the line is the stability margin.
clf
fit = polyfit(windup.LoadFactor, windup.StickForce, 1);
plotStability(windup.LoadFactor, windup.StickForce,fit)
Share as a Report
To create a report of your work, just export this file to PDF.
Demonstration Summary
This demo introduced the following MATLAB features:
• Import Tool (R2011a): Interactively import data from text and spreadsheet files
• Live Editor (R2016a): Combine code, output, and rich formatting to create sharable programs
• Interactive Plot Editing (R2016b, R2017a): Explore and annotate your plots. Automate with
automatically-generated MATLAB code
• yyaxis (R2016a): Overlay plots with a shared X axis but different Y axis.
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