This thesis focuses on the optimization of the electric aircraft propeller in order to increaseflight performance. Electric aircraft have limited energy, particularly the electricmotor torque compared to the fuel engine torque. For that, redesign of the propeller forelectric aircraft is important in order to improve the propeller efficiency. The airplanepropeller theory for Glauert is selected as a design method and incorporated with Brattimprovements of the theory. Glauert theory is a combination of the axial momentum andblade element theory. Pipistrel Alpha Electro airplane specifications have been chosen asa model for the design method. Utilization of variable pitch propeller and the influence ofnumber of blades has been investigated. The obtained design results show that the variablepitch propellers at cruise speed and altitude 3000 m reducing the power consumptionby 0.14 kWh and increase the propeller efficiency by 0.4% compared to the fixed pitchpropeller. Variable pitch propeller improvement was pretty good for electric aircraft. Theoptimum blade number for the design specifications is 3 blades.

This paper presents the work done during a Master Thesis at Airbus Helicopters company in theaccident investigation team. The focus of that internship was the hydraulic systems on AS350 helicoptersthat assist flight controls and may have an impact on accidents. It led to a "lessons learned" analysis basedon accident rates and protective/ corrective measures taken by Airbus Helicopters after hydraulics relatedaccidents. A detailed protocol for hydraulic circuit expertise has been written and a tool-case for functionalpost-crash hydraulic tests has been developed. This paper will present how helicopters fly, are controlledand how hydraulics are involved in flight controls. The above cited missions will then be explained.

Optionally piloted aircraft are conceived to operate either through manned or remote piloting. However, as long as they are under testing with remote controls, a safety pilot is usually present on board. The consequence is that the crew shall be protected from failures of the automated flight systems. For this reason, specific safety devices that serve as monitors were designed. An instance of such devices is the Fault Detection System for small rotorcrafts. The goal of this work is to adapt this monitor to a new actuation set. The existing code is adjusted to fit the updated actuators' hardware and the new code is then tested and improved based on an iterative validation process. The final outcome is a system that can successfully intervene to mitigate failures of other components in accordance with the safety requirements.

Since the end of the last century, numerical simulations have been widely developed in all fields because they make it possible to predict the behavior of dynamic systems. In the field of missile systems, they are used to carry out preliminary studies, performance analyzes, trajectory simulation, etc. It is then possible to determine the conditions at each point of the flight envelope without having to conduct costly tests. In this master thesis, a 6 degrees-of-freedom simulation tool is developed to model a supersonic interceptor taking into account the effects of a rotating earth. Models for propulsion, aerodynamics, guidance-control-navigation systems are described. A comparison between a control by aerodynamic surfaces and by vector thrust during a vertical launch is made.

This report is a degree project at the Department of Engineering Mechanics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The purpose of this study is to provide a basis for KTH regarding the choice of mode of transportation for regional business travel with regards to time, cost, safety, work environment and environmental impact. Travels between Stockholm and a selection of Swedish cities was carried out for data collection for the study. During these trips the position of the route was recorded, on the basis of which energy consumption and corresponding emissions could be calculated. Vibrations and noise levels were also measured for evaluation of the work environment. In general, it can be concluded that air travel is the fastest. When it comes to cost, carpooling with the maximum number of passengers is the cheapest. For other means of transport, ticket prices vary greatly depending on the demand for a particular route, and it was not possible to draw any conclusions as to whether tickets with one company were cheaper than for another. All examined means of transportation were considered safe to travel with, but car is the least safe of them. Vibration measurements were not performed during air travel, but in general travel by train, car and bus is of particular risk for low-frequency vibrations that can lead to nausea. For the journeys where measurements were carried out, it can be concluded that SJ high-speed train did not show low-frequency oscillations to the same extent as other vehicles, and thus can be assumed to be of lower risk of motion sickness. All means of transportation examined met the Swedish Work Environment Authority’s requirements for noise. Trains and electric cars were the vehicles with the lowest emissions per passenger, provided that the electricity used originated from the common Nordic or Swedish electricity markets. The environmental impact of nuclear waste in connection with the production of nuclear power has not been taken into account in this study. The energy consumption per passenger was in the same order of magnitude for all vehicles examined, but generally lowest for buses. Both emissions and energy consumption per passenger are of course the lowest when the vehicle is travelling with the maximum number of passengers, which was not the case during the completed journeys.

This article summarizes the work done during a six-month internship at the French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation. The purpose of the internship is to optimize flight tests dedicated to high speed performances. Therefore, a tool which gives the optimized flight paths was developed to fulfill specifications gave by the department in charge of performances calculations. An internally developed software which solves flight mechanics equations (Perfo2000) has been used. It enables to calculate various trajectories. It has its own code language. A program, which comes as an extension to Perfo2000, has been developed to optimize test flights. It takes as an input the test specifications consisting of several flight points that need to be covered during the flights. Besides, a user interface (programmed with VBA coding) reads the output files from Perfo2000 and provides a summary of the most useful data to the flight testing department.

The cooling system is a crucial part for helicopter operations. Withoutit, hovering flight could not be operated. The cooling system for the maingearbox of a helicopter is composed of radiators and a fan. A fan is anaerodynamic body and as such it can be improved in terms of aerodynamicefficiency. Therefore di↵erent parameters need to be taken into account whendesigning a new axial fan to have good aerodynamic performance. Simulationshave been carried out to investigate the e↵ects of these parameters andcome up with an optimal design based on the study requirements. The fanhas to enable the cooling system to evacuate an amount of thermal power sothat the helicopter can take o↵ with high outside temperatures. This optimaldesign has shown an increase of the mass flow rate up to a factor of abouttwo for a given pressure loss compared to the original fan.

Airbus provides continuous in-service support to airlines in order for them to enable the safe and efficient operation of the Airbus fleet at all times. This support, requested whenever an aircraft is operated on the limit or outside of its operation envelope, is very time and resource-consuming, causing costs for the airline and operations disruption. To achieve a Zero Aircraft on Ground (ZeroAoG) objective, among others, Airbus has created a big-data platform called Skywise that still remains to be utilized for Loads in-service support. This project demonstrates how the platform can be used to serve this objective.

The vertical tail-plane (VTP) in-service support process that is currently done using Microsoft Excel was replicated on the Skywise Slate application using SQL, HTML and JavaScript. Additional features were implemented and an end-user friendly interface was created to improve user experience, making in-service support faster, more convenient and more intuitive using Skywise.

In order to explore further capabilities of the platform and to improve this process, a \textit{RandomForestRegressor} model was implemented on Python in the Skywise Code Workbook application, predicting the loads on the VTP for conditions not available in the database of pre-computed cases. This allows the automatic processing of the aircraft's recordings for crosswind takeoff and landing events and the computation of the associated VTP loads. However, the platform proved to be not yet suited to host the process and the local implementation of the latter that was done as a comparison yielded better results on all aspects.

These results confirm the feasibility of automatic events analysis and the potential of Skywise as a spearhead in the ZeroAoG objective, but the platform is not yet suitable for such applications. Further development and the addition of new features could open the door to new in-service support operations, allowing airlines to limit maintenance costs and prevent operations disruption.

This paper presents the work from a Master thesisat Bauhaus Luftfahrt (Munich, Germany) about subsystemdesign and analysis for electric commercial aircraft, particularlythe assessment of a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) powering a fullelectric subsystem architecture. The different components of theSOFC system architecture are modelled and assessed with theOpenMDAO framework. They are then assembled together toassess the performance of the whole SOFC system architecture,the main goal being to replace the conventional Auxiliary PowerUnit (APU) on the ground and to provide energy to all thesubsystems (e.g. flight controls, air conditioning, ice and rainprotection among others) of the aircraft during flight andground operations. The mass of the different components of theSOFC system is calculated, and a 2% operational empty massincrease is assumed for subsystem electrification. The resultsshow a kerosene block fuel reduction of 2.1% compared to theconventional baseline aircraft.

This project aimed to improve on an existing MATLAB tool used for real-time monitoring of flutterduring flight testing of the Gripen E fighter jet. Flutter is a dynamic aeroelastic phenomenon thatcauses undamped oscillations in a structure, which may lead to structural failure. Because of thepotentially catastrophic consequences of flutter in an aircraft, it must be proven, through flight fluttertesting, to be free of flutter within its flight envelope. To increase flight safety during flutter flighttesting, accelerometer data from the aircraft is monitored in real-time by flight test engineers on theground. Monitoring is done using different tools including the aforementioned MATLAB tool. Thetool was improved by increasing its robustness, correcting existing flaws, and refining its overallgraphical presentation of data. New analysis tools such as filtering of time signals, an airspeedindicator plot, and a custom data cursor were also implemented.

The primary objective of this thesis is to evaluate the prospect of machine learning methods being used to classify flying qualities based on simulator data (with the focus being on pitch maneuvers). If critical flying qualities could be identified earlier in the verification process, they can be further invested in and focused on with less cost for design changes of the flight control system.

Information from manned simulations with given flying quality levels are used to create a replication of the performed pitch maneuver in a desktop simulator. The generated flight data is represented by different measures in the classification to separately train and test the machine learning models against the given flying quality level. The models used are Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machines with radial basis functions (RBF), linear and polynomial kernels along with Artificial Neural Networks. 

The results show that the classifiers correctly identify at least 80% of cases with critical flying qualities. The classification shows that the statistical measures of the time signals and first order time derivatives of pitch, roll and yaw rates are enough for classification within the scope of this thesis. The different machine learning models show no significant difference in performance in the scope of this thesis. In conclusion, machine learning methods show good potential for classification of flying qualities, and could become an important tool for evaluating flying qualities of large amounts of simulations, in addition to manned simulations.

In recent times the unmanned quadcopter aircraft has been used for a widening range of applications, but for longer distances it still falls short of conventional airplanes in terms of energy usage. There exists hybrid configurations of unmanned aircraft which combine the mobility of quadcopters and the range of fixed-wing aircraft. The transition between the hovering mode and the gliding mode, however, is a complex non-linear control problem. To solve this a recent study applied a neural network as a closed loop controller. This controller was capable of seamless mode transition and could be trained for any copter configuration using reinforcement learning. The work presented here focuses on improvements to the method of controller design established by said study, mainly focusing on increased realism of the aerodynamic simulations and the addition of control surfaces for increased maneuverability. These improvements resulted in a lift of 37% of the total copter weight and a higher achievable top speed of 8 m/s before instability occurs. To verify these improvements were not only present in the simulations a physical prototype was also constructed which when tested succeeded in hovering flight but failed to sustain any significant forward flight.

Vehicle electrification plays a significant role in the effort to reduce the environmental impact of the automotive industry. Scania is one of the leading manufacturers ofheavy vehicles which is currently moving towards a sustainable transport system by manufacturing a new generation of heavy vehicles powered by batteries. Oneof the major concerns with these vehicles is related to the noise generated by the electric axial fans used in the cooling system. This project was conducted with thepurpose of investigating the factors that positively affect both noise and performance in the electric fans. Based on two different blade design methods and several noisecontrol techniques, 11 fan models were developed. The fan models created with design method 1 are equipped with cambered-plate blades, while the models madewith design method 2 consist of airfoil-shaped blades. Moreover, the performance of these models was analyzed by using theoretical methods and Computational FluidDynamics (CFD). In addition, two empirical approaches were used to estimate the acoustic energy emitted by the fan models. Furthermore, the developed modelswere compared with two commercially available fans. It was found that both design methods provide similar performance in low pressure differences. On the other hand,the efficiency and acoustic energy are influenced by the choice of the noise control methods.

The automation of airfoil design process is an ongoing effort within the field of turbo-machinery design, with significant focus on developing new reliable and consistent methods that can meet the needs of the engineers. A wide variety of approaches has been in use for inverse airfoil design process which benefit from theoretical inverse design, statistical methods, empirical discoveries and many other ways to solve the design problem. This thesis work also develops a tool in Python to be used in airfoil aerodynamic design process that is simple, fast and accurate enough for initial design of turbo-machinery blades with focus on turbine airfoils used for operation in aircraft engines. To convey the decision-making process during development a simplified case is presented. The underlying considerations are discussed. Other available methods in the literature used for similar problems, are also evaluated and compared to demonstrate the advantages and limitations of the methods used within the tool. The inverse design problem is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem to handle various different objectives that are relevant for aerodynamic design of turbo-machinery airfoils. Test runs are made and the results are discussed to assess how robust the tool is and how the current capabilities can be modified or extended. After the development process, the tool is verified to be a suitable option for real-life design optimization tasks and can be used as a building block for a much more comprehensive tool that may be developed in the future.

This thesis work is part of a design process which aims to develop a four-seathybrid-electric aircraft at Smartflyer (Grenchen, Switzerland). In that scope,various mechanisms of the plane had to be developed, including the systemactuating the control surfaces. The objective of this thesis work is to designthe primary flight controls which will be implemented in the first prototypebuilt at Smartflyer.Firstly, the work investigates the calculation of the aerodynamic loads appliedto the control surfaces through the use of three different methods which areanalytical calculations, VLM analysis and CFD simulation. Then, the workconsists in defining the kinematic mechanisms of the flight control to handlethe deflection of the horizontal stabiliser, the ailerons and the rudder. Lastly,the calculation of the forces to which are submitted the components of theflight control is conducted. This step allows to determine the pilot controlforces and ensures to take into account the ergonomic aspect during the designphase. The results of this work highlight the limits of the different methodsused and serves as a basis for a future sizing work and detailed conception.

The introduction of hybrid-electric propulsion in future aircraft will be accompanied by a significant increase in cooling power requirements. Current studies at Bauhaus Luftfahrt e.V. are investigating the potential of the wing surface as heat sink to avoid additional drag from heat exchangers. However, heating of the airfoil is expected to affect its aerodynamic performance. For this purpose, this study investigates the effect of heat transfer on the aerodynamics of a two-dimensional airfoil with uniform wall temperature. Steady-state and fully-turbulent simulations using Computational Fluid Dynamics are performed. The focus is on the heat transfer effect on the performance of a modified NACA45018 airfoil considering typical flight conditions of a regional aircraft. The simulation setup was validated using numerical and experimental data found in literature. The study reveals that heating alters the pressure and skin-friction distribution along the airfoil in specific flight conditions. Since heating of the airfoil promotes flow separation, the total drag increases significantly, and aerodynamic efficiency diminishes, especially at high angles of attack. However, the results indicate that at low angles of attack total drag can also slightly decrease.

A civil plane engine, before being delivered to the airline company, is first tested on a ground test bed. During the test, the performances are checked by the engine manufacturer. The engine is then sent to the aircraft manufacturer for installation and flight testing. A part of the flight test includes a performances monitoring at cruise condition, the obtained data are send back to the engine manufacturer. The goal of this master’s thesis was to analyse the flight tests data and to compare it with the ground tests. This was supposed to help understanding deterioration phenomena in the first flights.In order to conduct the analysis, a thermodynamic model of the engine was adapted to extrapolate the results of the flight test. They showed a deterioration of the engine fuel consumption and temperatures compared to the ground tests results. This deterioration is believed to be caused by the high pressure core, especially by a deterioration of the high pressure compressor. Moreover, the relation between the engine and the aircraft performance was investigated. Theoretical relations failed to produce a valid equation between both, as key parameters were missing from the available data. But an empirical relation was found, allowing a deeper understanding of the engine contribution to the overall aircraft performance.

In recent years it has been discovered that the window installations on the Visby class corvette are prone to break. The aim of this report is to perform a structural analysis of three different windowinstallations. Thus, to find which window installation minimizes the risk of leaks and cracks in the attachment connecting the window glass and the hull. The three window installations consist of theexisting window installation and one of SAAB Kockums alternative solutions installed in two different ways, with and without an additional damping mass. The model that will be used in the simulationswill consist of a rectangular shaped carbon fibre composite sandwich plate that represents the side structure of the maneuver deck. Furthermore, it will include three windows where only the middlepositioned window will contain the given installation details in order to reduce the complexity of both the modelling and the simulations. Three load cases were simulated in ANSYS Workbench. Thefirst load case called "hogging" consisted of a bending moment along the vertical sides of the model. The second load case called "slamming" consisted of a vertical force pointing upwards along thebottom of the model. Lastly, a torsion load case was simulated. In all load cases the existing window installation were subjected to the largest strains along the inner edges of the attachment. In theslamming load case, the alternative solution without the double damping mass was exposed to least strains around the inner edges of attachment compared to the other window installations. For thehogging and the torsion load case the alternative solution with double damping mass produced least strains around the inner edges of the attachment. But the alternative solution without the doubledamping mass was also able to reduce the strains around the inner edges compared to the existing window installation. In conclusion, the alternative solution without an additional damping mass isin overall minimizing the strains along the inner edges of the attachment in which the most leaks and cracks have been observed. It has especially been efficient in reducing strains in the slammingload case. Even though the window installation with an additional damping mass best withstands hogging and torsion, the slamming load case is the most common scenario. Therefore, the windowinstallation that best withstands the slamming load case should be prioritized. Thus, the alternative window installation without the additional damping mass is the best alternative because it bestwithstands slamming but also reduces the strains along the inner edges compared to the existing window installation in the other load cases.

Airships were very popular 90 years ago with, for example, german Zeppelins. Now theyare back for several reasons, like their low energy consumption.But there are also still many problems to deal with like their sensitivity to wind gusts.In addition, the airships need more studies to improve their flight mechanics and sensitivityto the wind.This degree project, done with the French Aerospace Lab ONERA in Lille, studies a specificairship which is 5mlong and 1.7mwide. First, the airship is studied without wind to determineaerodynamic coefficients and added masses. Then, the model is confronted to experiments withwind gusts.

This paper, written at Safran Electronics & Defense as part of the author’s Master Thesis, is dedicated to the implementation of a GNSS alternate trajectory simulator for an aircraft GPS-aided Inertial Navigation System. First, the basic tenets of GPS-aided inertial navigation systems will be briefly reminded. The need for a GPS spoofing simulator will then be explained. The simulator architecture will be detailed, before showing the in-depth software implementation. Finally, the simulator performance will be ascertained to verify compliance with requirements.

The Swedish Sea Rescue Society (SSRS) is exploring how small, remotely launched drones can help in making the rescue work safer and more efficient. The planned drone to be used for such purposes is a 1 kg, 1 m wide, foam constructed, flying wing drone. Aviation regulatory authorities are however struggling with the problem posed by balancing the benefits of unmanned aerial vehicles (UASs) with the safety risk posed to manned aircraft, people and structures on the ground. A risk assessment framework called Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA) states specifications on risks that a certain operation can generate. An impact study was requested from SSRS as the purpose of this master thesis, to make sure the drones will not cause danger to other aircraft in the same airspace. SSRS needs to know how dangerous their drone is according to the regulations and how they can improve the design. A literature study was made to determine the critical scenarios for the UAVs area of application. A mathematical collision model was developed where the properties of the flying wing were considered to determine the energies involved. The results provide limits for when a small flying wing poses danger in its area of operation. The results also shows the effects of having a crumple zone included in the construction. A crumple zone only makes a difference when colliding at lower speeds. For the future, a combined model for the UAV to be used with the collision object would provide more accurate results since they affect each other in the collision.

Using autonomous underwater vehicles is a popular method of collecting samplesand conducting surveys, but the transportation of this information is not always easy.The underwater vehicle might be unable to transmit the information wirelessly, andsamples may be required to be transported a long distance. A possible solution tothese problems is a hybrid unmanned aerial vehicle, accompanying said underwatervehicle. After a submerged deployment, this vehicle could transport the informationover long distances, or conduct other operations at different locations in air or water.While quadcopters are an increasingly popular type of vehicle, conventional fixed­wingplanes are still superior when it comes to range. This thesis designs, builds and testssuch a vehicle, with the goal of a submerged deployment, performing vertical takeoff,and then transitioning to fixed­wing flight. To minimize the drone’s impact on thevehicle which it accompanies, it is nearly buoyancy neutral by flooding the hull withwater, which enters and exits the vehicle rapidly during dive and egress. To managethe pressure at the underwater vehicle’s operating depth, it utilizes a bladder ratherthan having a heavy rigid compartment. It floats as a tailsitter at the surface, usingtwo motors in a tractor configuration to pull itself out of the water. The vehicle builtproved capable of being submerged and taking off vertically, however there were nofixed­wing flights attempted.

The work summarized in this report aims to investigate how a drone airplane design can be optimized to create a safer and more efficient sea rescue by providing staff with an early picture, performing search missions and aiding communication through visual contact. A flying wing is in theory one of the most efficient designs for a fixed wing aircraft, at the same time as it also offers high structural efficiency for its given size. In this report, an overview of aerodynamics, stability and flying quality for a flying wing is discussed and analysed. XFLR5 was used for this project, and a comparison between the analytical results and wind tunnel test data for a prototype was conducted. A strong correlation was found between the theoretical analyses and the wind tunnel data. A simple control solution using only one set of elevons has been proposed and simulated, resulting in Level 1 dynamic stability for all modes except Dutch-roll (where the drone’s damping is 𝜁𝑑𝑟=0.07 and the requirement for Level 1 is 𝜁𝑑𝑟=0.08). For the range of angle of attack used, the autopilot system will have to trim the drone in flight to achieve stability. As the drone only has one set of control surfaces there will be a loss of efficiency in this scenario, meaning that 𝐶𝐿/𝐶𝐷 = 15.7 for loiter speed of 15 𝑚/𝑠 and 7.9 for full speed at 35 𝑚/𝑠. In regular flight, with a total mass <1 𝑘𝑔, the drone is able to fly at full speed for 214 𝑘𝑚 or loiter for 6.3 ℎ with a battery package of 130 𝑊ℎ. As such, the objective of this project was achieved, and the proposed design met the given requirements.

In the context of an aviation industry whose top priority is to face the sustainability challenge, the growing civil UAV branch is not an exception. Hydrogen-powered UAVs equipped with PEM (Polymer Electrolyte Membrane) fuel cells are more and more frequently identified as the most convincing and promising technology, particularly for long-endurance mission requirements. However, the onboard carriage of a hydrogen fuel cell leads to unexplored internal flow characteristics, including the introduction of water vapour. The purpose of this master thesis is to develop a valid CFD model and methodology for the internal flow simulation of hydrogen-powered UAVs. Given the strict environmental operational requirements of PEM fuel cells, the intended application of the model is to effectively assess the evolution of the internal bay flow temperature and humidity fields. An explicit-time fourth-order Runge-Kutta projection method is tested successfully on a sample 2D case setup. The case geometry and flow conditions are inspired by the Green Raven UAV project conceived by the Department of Aeronautical and Vehicle Engineering at KTH.

Aeroelasticity is a multidisciplinary subject encompassing several fields of study. Aeroelastic behaviour is defined by the relation between inertial-, elastic- and aerodynamic forces that appear in dynamic systems in steady- or unsteady conditions. Published literature in the field of supersonic aeroelasticity does not generally provide a thorough demonstration of application. Further, high precision methods incorporated in commercial software often require an extensive preparatory phase and entail a significant computational cost. Thus, the absence of rapid and affordable estimation models for supersonic aeroelastic analyses appears evident. Hence, the scope of this report is to demonstrate and describe the development of an estimation model for aeroelastic analysis of wing structures. The developed model should generate rapid results indicative of the true aeroelastic behaviour of slender wings with thin airfoil geometries in varying supersonic flow conditions.

The wing is modelled as a structural finite element beam with properties based on Euler bending- and St. Venant torsion theory. Moreover, two quasi-steady aerodynamic models of Piston theory and Unified Oscillatory Supersonic-Hypersonic theory are presented. The aerodynamic models are implemented in the finite element wing model through strip theory. The computational aeroelastic model is assembled to perform aeroelastic analyses in steady- and quasi-steady conditions. The developed models are evaluated against the previously conducted aeroelastic studies of the Torii Matsuzaki wing by Hiroshi Torii and Yuji Matsuzaki and Marius-Corné Meijer.

The conclusion regarding the developed model for supersonic aeroelastic analysis is that it generates results rapidly for varying geometries and flow conditions. Unfortunately, when analysing the aeroelastic behaviour of wings with double-symmetric airfoils, a paradox of infinite stability ensues. Due to lack of modern experimental data and time limitations, no further validation of the aeroelastic model is presented. Thus, the developed aeroelastic prediction model cannot presently be fully evaluated as it requires additional work and validation.

Flight mechanical simulators play an important role in the design steps during development of a new aircraft. To be able to simulate and evaluate flight mechanical characteristics during development it is important to minimize development time and cost while keeping flight safety high during early flights. The aim of the project presented in this thesis is to develop a method for validating a flight mechanical simulator against flight test data from dynamic maneuvering. An important part in this thesis is about how deviations in the result data can be found and analyzed, for example deviations between aircraft individuals or store configurations. The work presented here results in a good model for comparison of a big amount of data where it is easy to backtrace where the deviation occurs.

Integrating hardware in simulations is useful in many applications, for example to investigate the performance of an aircraft with the non-ideal response of a physical system. This thesis aims to integrate a flight simulator, JSBSim, with an actuator test rig, FLUMES Iron Bird. Two aircraft models were replicated in JSBSim, a passenger aircraft and a delta winged fighter aircraft. The models were analyzed to ensure proper flight performance in regards to stability. The stability analysis was conducted from both the aerodynamic data provided as well as through state-space theory. The fighter aircraft was unstable in the subsonic region and in need of a flight control system to fly properly. The integration with the test rig was implemented using Simulink S-functions and a real-time target computer ensuring synchronous communication with the actuator test rig. The passenger aircraft was successfully integrated and tested with the actuator test rig.

The oil circuit of a jet engine is required to lubricate and cool mechanical parts. The oil is pumped from the oil tank and flows through heat exchangers. Then it is injected on the bearings for lubrication and cooling, before being scavenged at the bottom of the sumps and finally flows back to the oil tank. During flight, the volume of oil inside the tank fluctuates depending on many parameters like the engine rotation speed and the oil temperature to name but a few. The flow inside the sumps is diphasic with oil and air mixing up. The physical phenomena taking place in the oil circuit are complex and understanding them is essential to size an oil circuit for a new engine design. Mass is a critical factor in aviation and being able to design accordingly an oil circuit is a valuable asset.This work focuses on improving a 1D model predicting the evolution of the oil level in the tank. The model relies on the geometry of the engine, the architecture of the oil circuit and real flight data provided by the airline companies. This data contains flight parameters such as engine rotation speed, oil temperature and pressure. The prediction is then compared with the real volume of oil in the tank measured during the flight. The model is compared to experimental data to access its accuracy. Finally, the model is adapted to three different engines produces by Safran to test its robustness to geometry changes.

This study was performed to investigate aerodynamic characteristics of the 37.5% scaled­ down Green Raven MK18 airframe, to evaluate boundary corrections method, and to investigate on support interference. A wind tunnel test was originally planned on June 2021 at a Large­Low­Speed Wind Tunnel at University of Bristol; however, due to COVID­19 travel restrictions, the test has been postponed to November 2021. In or­der to supplement the work and data directly required for the test, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) investigations were performed in free air and in wind tunnel condi­tions, both with and without support interference, at a Reynolds number of 7E+05. The simulations utilized an incompressible Reynolds-­Averaged­-Navier.­Stokes equa­tion accompanied with k − ω SST for turbulent modelling. Corrections factors were obtained to compensate for wall interference, and results indicate a satisfactory agree­ment between free ­air and wind­ tunnel corrected data for wall interference. The sup­ port structure interferes with the aerodynamic loads produced by the model. Lift and drag decrease, and pitching moment increases compared to WT without support structure condition.

The Integrated Vehicle Dynamics Control (IVDC) concept can influence the vehicle behaviour both longitudinally and laterally with just one upper level control concept and further lower level controllers. This demands for state estimation of the vehicle which also includes estimating parameters of interest for the vehicle dynamicist. The approach to this research is firstly in developing a robust unscented Kalman filter (UKF) estimator for the vehicle side slip tracking and also for cornering stiffness estimation which is then fed to the existing model predictive control allocation (MPCA) controller to enhance the lateral stability of the vehicle for the different manoeuvres studied. Based on these developments, two types of filters are created. One with adaption of distance between center of gravity (COG) and roll center height and another without adaption. The key factor in the estimator development is the time adaptive process covariance matrix for the cornering stiffnesses, with which only the initial values have to be parameterised. Combining this research encompasses effective and adaptive method for a better quality of estimation with a kinematic vehicle model which behaves like a real world vehicle, at least virtually.This study is carried out with the understanding of various optimal estimators, parametric sensitivity analysis and statistical inferences, facilitating a base for robust estimation. Keywords: kalametric, state estimation, design matrix, aliasing, kalman filter, projection algorithm, resolution