Estimation of Aircraft Dynamic States and Instrument Systematic Errors from Flight Test Measurements
CA Martin, RA Feik · 1982
Problems arising in the analysis of data from flight tests of highly manoeuvrable aircraft are discussed. The non-linear system of equations describing the aircraft motions include both aerodynamic and instrument parameters as unknowns. A method is formulated for estimating the instrument characteristics and reconstructing a compatible set of time histories of the flight as a prelude to extracting the aerodynamic parameters. The application of Extended Kalman Filter and Maximum Likelihood techniques to the resulting estimation problem is outlined. The two techniques are applied to computer generated data and their performances compared.