Flight Mechanics and Flight Control Systems

Field of expertise

The field of expertise of the team lies in flight mechanics, simulation and flight control systems.

Small aircraft manufacturers cannot realize accurate flight dynamic models during the development of new aircraft since this will involve a high financial burden for them. Therefore, possible problems of the new aircraft, for example in handling qualities, are dealt with at a later stage in development, mostly applying trial and error methods. However, aircraft characteristics such those mentioned above are important sales arguments in today’s market. In order to provide customers with a competitive product, efficient flight dynamics models are required. The Center for Aviation (ZAV) has extensive experience with general aviation aircraft and can cope with ambitious goals required by aircraft development, training and research flight simulation and flight control systems design and development.

Another field of expertise of the Center for Aviation lies in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). While already multiple applications for these new machines exist, safety regulations are still rather vague and may vary from country to country. In spite of this, manufacturers and regulatory bodies are trying to bridge the gap between the versatility of these new machines and the need to guarantee safety of people on ground and in the air. The flight mechanics and flight control systems team also deals with the safety aspect of UAV and can support costumers in certification processes.

Services

The flight mechanics and flight control systems team can offer you the following services:

• Consulting for the definition, specification and development from limited control authority to full fly-by-wire flight control systems for fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft
• Parameter Estimation for research, development and training purposes
• Real-time simulation (including flight control systems) in our ReDSim and HiSim
• Development of complex simulation model for off-line and real-time simulation.
• System Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety (RAMS) as external auditor
• Course about JARUS Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA)

 

Laboratory equipment

The flight mechanics and flight control systems team has the direct responsibility to operate, maintain and develop the following laboratory equipment:

• ReDSim – Reconfigurable and flexible research and didactics simulator
  Research simulator of the ZAV able to simulate dynamic aircraft models and perform real-time simulations.
• HiSim - High Fidelity Simulator
  Research and development flight simulator with a motion base and virtual-reality visual system.
• UMARS – Unmanned Modular Airborne Research System
  Unmanned, modular research drone of the center for aviation for various applications.

Project examples

The following example projects are or have been carried out by the flight mechanics and flight control systems team:

• HORUS – High Operational Reliability for Unmanned Systems:
  System for unmanned aerial vehicles to enhance operational safety in regard of future UAS regulations.
• MODEL-SI - Digital twin case study for safety standards in aviation
  Assessment of the deployment of digital solutions in eVTOL and drone development, pro-cesses, and operations with regards to the whole airworthiness certification approach.
• WHeSI - White-Box Helicopter System Identification
  Time-domain system identification of a fully physics-based, non-linear helicopter model.
• CATL Collective and Throttle Lever:
  Development of new inceptor designs suitable for tiltrotor and compound helicopter designs.
• Generic Collision Avoidance Algorithm:
  A generic algorithm to prevent collisions of UAV with manned aircraft or other UAV in densely populated airspaces.
• Potential Master und PhD theses:
  Master or Doctoral Work with focus on flight mechanics and flight control systems.

Courses and training

The following courses and training opportunities are offered by the flight mechanics and flight control systems team:

• Participation in the System Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety (RAMS) course as an external auditor.
  Course in RAMS principles and their application
• Course in JARUS Specific Operation Risk Assessment (SORA)
  Advanced course about the JARUS SORA process and its application in practice.