1,721,033 research outputs found
A Telemetry Node for MNEMOSINE, a Flight Test Instrumentation System for Sport Aviation Aircraft
No full textReliable and Cost-Effective Flight Testing of Ultralight Aircraft
No full textThis paper reports upon an integrated approach to the flight-testing campaign of a new ultralight machine airplane model toward its certification according to the German airworthiness requirements. Flight trials have been completed, resulting in full compliance with the above regulations, and the certification process has been successfully accomplished. This result ensues from a cooperative effort of the team formed by the aircraft manufacturer and a research group of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano, including both permanent and external staff, together with a varying number of graduate students. The academic contribution consists of the support to flight-test mission planning, flight-test operations, data processing and analysis, as well as in the supply and management of the Mnemosine flight-test instrumentation system. This project highlights the availability of both the necessary expertise and an economic, dependable, simple, and complete flight-test instrumentation system dedicated to light aircraft, opening full access of small size manufacturers to cost-effective, reliable, systematic flight-testing procedures, in view of enhanced flight safety and overall quality of ultralight machine operations
The "Flight Testing" Graduate Course at Politecnico di Milano
Full text linkThis paper describes the current status of the “Flight Testing” graduate course held at the Politecnico di Milano as an elective subject in its Aeronautical Engi-neering MSc curriculum. The course, delivered each year, has reached its 10th anniver-sary in 2015. Nearly 120 students passed the course to date, most of them upon submis-sion and presentation of a flight test report concerning a real flight test mission carried out by the student in person. In fact, the unique characteristic of this course is the provi-sion of a complete experience in which each student is requested to design, perform and report on a real flight test of a manned aircraft, acting as a Flight Test Engineer under all respects. The conditions of the flight test experience and two flight test campaigns are described, reporting on the latest updates in the FTI system, which now features a fully functional telemetry capability
An Ubiquitous Positioning System Based on IEEE 802.15.4 Radio Signals
No full textThis work presents a theoretical and experimental study of methods and strategies to implement an ubiquitous positioning system based on IEEE 802.15.4 radio signals. Ranging phase is first analyzed. An empirical method, for a combined use of both Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and Time Of Flight (TOF) measures, is proposed. Distance measurements performed in different scenarios highlight that RSSI measures provide lower errors on short distance while TOF measures are more suitable for longer distances. The RSSI threshold in use can be different for every scenario but our measurements show that it can be well identified by observing the relevant RSSI calibration curve. Once this threshold is identified, a complementary use of RSSI and TOF measures is then possible. Subsequently the positioning phase is analyzed. The main range-based and centralized localization algorithms are at first compared using simulated localizations, both in their cooperative and non cooperative version, in order to have a complete overview of their performances. However, the considered driving case study (the position monitoring of vehicles/assets in a typical airport area) puts in evidence the requirement for a non cooperative localization strategy. In this condition simulations show that the optimization approach outperforms the other localization algorithms. The deterministic optimization has been also preferred to the stochastic one: position accuracy being equal, the stochastic optimization methods also need the preliminary set up of different parameters through several simulations and trials. Real-world positioning tests, considering indoor and outdoor scenarios of different sizes (from ten to some hundreds of meters) confirm the validity of this choice, the effectiveness of the proposed ranging method and also the importance of exploiting anchors' redundancy. However, position accuracy is still poor for the most noisy scenarios. Future works should focus on the development- of an efficient weighting algorithm to further decrease position error
Experiences in Academic Flight Testing Education
Full text linkThe paper aims to detail the educational flight testing activities performed at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology at the Politecnico di Milano (DSTA-PoliMi), including the development of low-cost, reliable flight testing instrumentation (FTI) and the administration of the graduate course in flight testing. Design/methodology/approach - The flight testing course program closely adheres to the typical content of an introductory course offered in a professional flight testing school. However, within academic courses, it has a unique feature: each student is required to plan, perform and report on a real flight test experience, acting as a flight test engineer. Educational activities in this framework have been successfully matched to applied research and technical support for private companies. Findings - At the educational level, several elements arise that are rarely concentrated within a single course, such as multidisciplinary integration, individual conceive-design-implement-operate (CDIO) project, real-life experimental procedures and techniques, teamwork, communication and reporting, relation with non-academic partners. Practical implications - Based on the development of a FTI system for light aviation and on the flight testing course, DSTA-PoliMi has built a solid capability in flight testing, introducing graduate students to this specific niche of expertise and empowering co-operation with companies in the light aviation environment, while offering capabilities and tools that are typically regarded as a prerogative of major aerospace companies. Originality/value - The paper discusses an original approach to flight testing education in an academic setting that avoids the high costs and complexity connected to certified aircraft flight operations and instrumentation, nevertheless allowing the achievement of significant results, also in applied engineering research
Academic Experiences with a Very Light Aircraft-Dedicated Flight Test Instrumentation System
No full textA Very Low Cost UAV Platform for Education in Flight Testing
No full textThe Department of Aerospace Science and Technology of the Politecnico di Mila-no has an consolidated tradition in flight testing education. The present paper presents Chip-py, the latest addition to the “Flight Testing” MSc course assets. It is a 640 g maximum take off mass, 1200 mm wingspan, 250 W electrical motor powered, in-house developed un-manned air vehicle. Chippy is conceived to serve as an effective, dependable, very-low-cost platform to provide students with an initial, hands-on flight testing experience, preparatory for the subsequent first person test flight core activity included in the course syllabus. It features a multi-sensor suite (GPS, inertial data, magnetometer, air data, propulsion data, system state), an on-board secure digital memory card-based data recorder and a 802.15.4, 2.4 GHz-based telemetry link to the ground station. Among the more traditional tasks performed by the on board avionics it is worth to be mentioned the electronic flight test system, by means of which it is possible to define at mission planning time a sequence of test points, load them on the electronic flight card subsystem and have the on board test point director, triggered by the pilot on ground, autonomously execute them. Results of the validation flights campaign, per-formed in second quarter of 2014, are presented
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