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flight test speeds. During the flight flutter tests, aircraft is flied
at a range of sub critical speeds and some form of excitation is
applied to the aircraft. The response of the structure is
measured at a number of locations on the aircraft, and the
data obtained is used to determine the stability at the current
test point. Predictions are then made whether it is safe to
proceed to the next test point. This process is repeated at
various flight conditions and aircraft weight, and CG
configurations until the flight envelope is cleared. Common
excitation means used in practice include control surface
pulses, oscillating control surfaces, thrusters, inertia exciters,
aerodynamic vanes, and random atmospheric turbulence
(Kehoe, 1995; Brenner et al., 1997; Meijer, 1995; van Nunen
and Piazzoli, 1979). It is very important that the excitation
system must provide adequate excitation over the desired
frequency range, and must provide adequate force levels to
ensure accurate determination of stability parameter. In
practice, the most common response data analysis procedure
is to track the variation of the modal damping of the aircraft
structure with the air speed. Some examples of other flutter
prediction methods include flutter margin (Zimmerman and
Weissenburger, 1964), envelope function (Cooper et al.,
1993; Nissim and Gilyard, 1989; Nissim, 1993), eigenvector
orientations (Pidaparti et al., 2001). Cooper (1995) gives an
overview of the several modal estimation algorithms, both in
time and frequency domain for extracting stability estimates
and detecting time-varying and nonlinear dynamics.
In the present paper, the effect of different excitation
systems, modal parameter estimation techniques on the
accuracy of the processed flight test data, and other special
Introduction
Aeroelastic flutter is the complex interaction of aerodynamic,
elastic, and inertia forces producing an unstable, usually
divergent oscillation of the aircraft structure or the
component (Fung, 1993). Airworthiness regulations require
that stability within the flight envelope of the aircraft be
demonstrated by flight flutter tests (MIL-A-8870C, 1993). In
spite of the improvements that have taken place in the flutter
test techniques, instrumentation, and response data analysis,
flutter testing is still a risky test for several reasons. One
reason for the risk associated with flutter testing is that sub
critical damping trends cannot be accurately extrapolated to
predict stability at higher airspeeds. In addition, aeroelastic
stability may change suddenly from a stable condition to one
that is unstable with only few differences in airspeed. Thus,
one must fly as close as possible to actual flutter speeds to
detect the instabilities accurately. Therefore, a careful
expansion of the flight envelope is required to avoid possible
hazardous situations. For this purpose, a large number of
flight tests are usually performed with careful increases in
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Excitation systems
Airworthiness requirements
Airworthiness requirements applied to aircraft are mainly
referenced to MIL-A-8870C (1993), and federal airworthiness
requirements, for different category aircraft such as FAR 25
(2000) and JAR-25 (2004). All these documents give a very
broad perspective of the aeroelastic stability requirements. In
essence, according to the specifications, all configurations of the
aircraft shall be free from any aeroelastic instability for all
combinations of altitude and speed encompassed by the limit
speed (VL/ML) versus altitude envelope enlarged at all points by
the airspeed margin of safety. Limit speed is commonly taken as
the dive speed of the aircraft. According to paragraph 3 of MILA-8870C, the aircraft shall meet the following stability design
requirements for both normal and failure conditions.
Airspeed margin
The equivalent airspeed, VE, margin of safety shall not be less
than 15 percent at all points on the VL/ML envelope of the
airplane, both at constant Mach number, and separately, at
constant altitude. This situation is shown in Figure 1.
Damping
The total aerodynamic plus structural damping coefficient g
shall not be less than 3 percent (g 0.03) for any critical
flutter mode for all altitudes and flight speeds from minimum
cruising speed up to VL/ML. Minimum damping requirement
is shown in Figure 1.
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Inertia exciters
Inertia exciters work on the principle of generating excitation
forces by rotating eccentric weight and oscillating weight.
In the rotating eccentric mass excitation system, inertia force
is proportional to the exciter mass multiplied by the square of
the rotating speed. Therefore, the excitation capability of
these exciters may be limited at low frequencies, and excessive
at higher frequencies. The main advantage of these systems is
that their design is simple and several exciters, each producing
different excitation forces can be distributed throughout the
aircraft. Each of these exciters can be controlled individually
allowing to generate specific types of excitation such as
symmetrical or anti-symmetrical. Frequencies up to 65 Hz
can be excited by these systems. Frequency sweeps as well as
frequency dwell followed by abrupt stopping can be applied in
flight flutter tests. It is reasonably simple to determine the
force or a signal proportional to force exerted on the aircraft
structure, cross-spectral techniques can be employed for
calculating resonance frequencies and corresponding
damping coefficients. However, these systems are usually
heavy and they raise the concern about the effect on the
modal characteristics of the aircraft they are installed on.
A further problem may be the generation of sufficiently high
exciting force at low frequencies. Inertia exciter system
adequately excited the modes of interest, and was essential for
safely expanding the flight envelope of B-1A airplane (Dobbs
and Hodson, 1979).
Thrusters
Thrusters are also known as impulse generators, and they are
used for structural excitation. Thrusters are usually
lightweight and they provide transient responses of short
duration, which are important when the aircraft has to dive
from an altitude to reach a test condition. Owing to their
lightweight, they do not affect the modal characteristics of the
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155
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high signal to noise ratio from the measured data. The data
inaccuracy and presence of noise may lead to computational
modes in the calculation.
Time domain modal analysis methods also use single
degree of freedom and multi degree of freedom models.
Among the single degree of freedom models, the simplest but
most easy to use model is the logarithmic decrement method
which uses a single exponentially damped sinusoid model.
The model will give incorrect estimates, if there is more than
one mode in the response even if the resonances are well
separated.
Among some of the multi degree of freedom time domain
methods, we can name least-squares time domain method,
Ibrahim time domain method, autoregressive moving average
(ARMA) series method, and least squares complex
exponential method.
In the least squares method, the vibration response data are
used for a curve-fitting effort against a defined mathematical
model to derive the modal parameters. For a multi degree of
freedom dynamic system, its free vibration response is known
to be in the form:
xt
N
X
i1
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Flutter prediction
l4 A3 l3 A2 l2 A1 l A0 0:
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R t max
t
envttdt
R0t max
:
0 envtdt
C
8
X
>
>
>
>
>
T >
;
: F
where:
M 21 K ;
K
M 21 C ;
C
M 21 F 9
F
Cs 1 rV 1 A1 t; and K
K s 1 rV 1 A0 10
C
2
2
where subscript s denotes structural terms. If the
identification process described above is repeated at two
distinct velocities, then aerodynamic stiffness matrix [A0], and
aerodynamic damping matrix [A1] can be evaluated
separately. This way, the behaviour of the system at any air
speed can be predicted either by integrating the equations of
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References
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Further reading
Hodson, C.H., Dobbs, S.K., Brosnan, M.J. and Chen, J.B.
(1993), X-31A flight flutter test excitation by control
surfaces, AIAA-93-1538-CP, paper presented at 34th
AIAA Structures, Structural Dynamics and Materials
Conference, La Jolla, CA, April.
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1. Timme S., Badcock K. J.. 2011. Updating Computational Aeroelastic Models using Flight Flutter Test Data. International
Journal of Aerospace and Lightweight Structures (IJALS) - 01, 157. [CrossRef]