Pre-Flight Test Verification of Automatic Stabilization System Using Aircraft Trimming Surfaces

Abstract

The new requirement of installing the flight stabilization system onboard the airplanes for performing the single-pilot flights in IFR rules was issued lately. It caused the necessity of developing such a system for small aircraft. The proposed system was developed using Model-Based Design then tuned and tested in Model, Pilot and Hardware in the Loop Simulations. The paper presents the next advanced stage of testing—verification in simulation and ground tests on the PZL-130 Orlik airplane. The implementation of this system does not modify the pilot’s primary manual controls. The newly introduced electrical trim is used for automatic stabilization but can be used at manual trimming as it was previously, depending on the chosen operation mode. The ground tests were planned according to civil aviation authority and aviation law requirements. Chosen results from simulated flights were analyzed and presented, confirming the effectiveness of the proposed system. The dedicated application allowing the test engineer to change stabilization system parameters during the flight on a touchscreen tablet was developed and described. The outcome of the stabilization system test campaign was a verification of its performance before the flight tests. The comparison of simulated and real flight data will allow identifying model deficiencies and flight stabilization system efficiency, which makes possible improvements implementation. Additionally, it appeared to be the cost-effective and less electrical energy-consuming automatic flight stabilization system for small aircraft. Such features benefit initiatives like Future Sky, More Electric Aircraft and aircraft stabilization system retrofit.