Flight Testing publications
 

Hi,

I am looking for some good publications regarding fixed wing flight testing techniques (either in digital or printed format). I have found a document published by USNTPS which looks quite impressive.. But still, there might be some more positions to check.

Thanks!

I have come to flight testing late in my career (just received my first flying FTE authorisation at the age of 51) and found both Kimberlin and Stinton very helpful indeed when learning about it a couple of years ago. I was very lucky to get the Stinton one for fifty pounds last year at an Old Warden event. Internet prices are much higher. If you are new to flight testing, John Farley's A View from the Hover is not a text book but does, especially in the second half, provide a very useable and entertaining introduction to the ethos of flight testing.

A previous employer put me through a very focussed one-to-one introductory course to be a ground based FTE. My tutor for that training (if he's reading this, it was a job well done) recommended the following publically available materials which I found to be useful:

- The FlightTest Guide part of EASA CS-23.

- FAAOrder 4040.26B flight test risk management program

- Cooper-Harper report NASA TN D-5153

- AGARD Introduction to Flight Test Engineering

You will need to decide for yourself which bits of the large FTG and AGARD documents you need to study.

This EASA presentation is useful as well:

https://www.easa.europa.eu/system/fi...ganisation.pdf

Having just looked up the second-hand prices the book commands I have just decided to take my copy off my bookshelf and build a secure safe to store it in...

:eek:

Thank you so much guys!

I need those publications as I am preparing materials for my bachelor thesis in AE. The subject is not specified yet but it is surely going to be related to flight testing. My initial idea was to test one of the flight simulators we have here using techniques described in those manuals. Everything under supervision of a former test pilot.

Simulator assessment, either as per EASA / FAA, or to find ‘something seriously wanting’, requires knowledge of the real aircraft / system for comparison. Thereafter its ‘jump through the regulatory hoop’ and well considered judgement, where experience and strength of argument are important.

Assessing a simulator as an ‘unknown’ aircraft could be interesting, quite revealing. I recall one ‘story’ that an experimental aircraft simulation was found to be so wanting it would be considered un flyable if it were a real aircraft !
As with most assessments, first understand the task, the fundamental limitations of the device, and the objectives and boundaries of the assessment.

With regard to a thesis, defining and evaluating the method of assessment may be of greater importance than the result - your theory. Then test it; but is this with a viewpoint of an engineer / designer or a pilot / user, and how might any differences between views be reconciled ?

Agreed, simulators cannot simulate a stall or high altitude work - their use in upset recovery training has severe limitations.

LoC simulator assessment
 

LoC simulator assessment:-

An Evaluation of Several Stall Models for Commercial Transport Training.

Dynamics Modeling and Simulation of Large Transport Airplanes in Upset Conditions.

Agreed, Boeing or airbus won't release the flight test data. So your guess is as good as mine as to how representative the stall appears in a sim.

Well, it's more a case of not having the data to 'release'. Flight testing at the point of stall is quite limited in Part 25 certification testing, being largely restricted to demonstrating 'set-piece' stalls under various conditions. There is no requirement to demonstrate stall characteristics with, for example, significant sideslip. There is no intentional testing beyond the stall.

So, if you wanted data to support a simulator model that gave a correct representation of aircraft behaviour regardless of conditions and pilot technique, including beyond the stall, a huge amount of (high risk) testing that would be needed with all possible pilot control activity, in all configurations, covering the full range of load factors, Mach numbers, sideslip values, weights and cg positions. In the case of the AoA-protected aircraft, this would have to be repeated in the various degraded FCS modes.

The emphasis is, quite rightly, on avoiding the stall!

Genghis,

As you have amended your previous post, mine is no longer applicable so I have deleted it. Thank you for your amendment..

I have now deleted all of my contributions to this thread.

I was out of order re: the Merlin sim.

That aside however I listed useful books and hope the OP saved the list. One of them, available in most university libraries for free, I happened to write. Somebody below is using this fact to try and publicly out me on PPrune - he could of course have just reported my post to mods for quiet fixing behind the scenes, IF they had a problem with it, instead of grandstanding. At last count by the way I have written 2 books, 23 journal articles, 3 encyclopedia chapters, and a couple of hundred magazine articles on various technical aspects of aviation; most years I give a handful of public talks as well - it's hard not to occasionally mention my own work without being deliberately unhelpful. At the same time I have good (to me) reasons not to post anything here in my own name - as do most other PPrune regulars.

Life is too short, I don't like doing this, but am out of this thread.

OP - best of luck with this project and the rest of your degree.

Thanks Gents....

Advertising
 

Mods.

Should anonymous posters be advertising their own publications without declaring an interest?

If you're selling something I think you're obliged to be open and honest. If you want to recommend your own products why not just set up another account using your own name?

I wasn't trying to "out" anybody.

Here is some content from the Association of Airworthiness Professionals I would recommend.

http://www.awprofessionals.org/docs/..._8_1_2017.docx

Back to the thread: The OP referred to USNTPS documents; the last time that I used those involved force gauges and tape measures, which I continued to use in low tech aircraft.

How have techniques or assessment parameters changed with the advent of fly-by-wire or similar technical ‘enhancements’?
A simulator assessment might have access to a wide range of parameters, but how might these be depicted, and for what purpose.
The suggestion at #4, to use ‘old’ techniques on a modern aircraft could be very revealing. Is it possible to use them, will they providing meaningful data, and to what objective. Yet in some ways this is what is done during a subjective flight test - what does this aircraft feel like - but then again you are making a comparison, with what.
What will be your yardstick?

Does the evaluation have to be an aircraft, or is there an option to assess a system - a technical system, or that involving man, machine, and environment?

Wow, I did not expect this thread to grow that much. Thank you for all your comments!

The exact subject of my thesis is not specified yet. Perhaps I could ask you to help me with finding something interesting thanks to which I could gain some practical flight testing knowledge?

I have a free access to several types of flight simulators (some of them are military ones) and a support of experienced ex TP (not in the business for at least 15 years). In theory, I could also conduct some real flights (altough, due to the risky nature of flight testing, it would be hard to convince to that my school's authorities - even with previously mentioned TP onboard).

My initial idea was to choose let's say 2 most advanced flight simulators, treat them as real aircrafts, test them using flight testing procedures, collect the data and compare the results with real characteristics of actual aircrafts. What do you think?

The OP will find the book review thread elsewhere in the flight test forum, lots of good publication listed there.

For my experience of hundreds of hours of formal flight testing, most of it was not comparatively risky, and for my experience, not as risky as some maintenance check flying I have flown. Ultimately, it was a seemingly low risk training flight which proved to be my undoing.