Date of Award

Fall 2009

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

Degree Name

Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering

Department

Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

Richard P. Anderson

Committee Member

Maj Mirmirani

Committee Member

Charles N. Eastlake

Abstract

To develop and compare full envelope stability and control derivatives and their associated errors for a modern light composite twin engine airplane from flight test data and digital DATCOM (Data Compendium). This development is to serve three purposes 1) to provide data for validation of newer analytical techniques such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), 2) to provide public domain static and dynamic stability and control derivatives for a modern twin engine airplane, 3) to analyze the relationship between test design and error for both output error and equation error methods.

A flight test program was conducted on a Diamond Twin Star DA42 with Thielert engines and on a DA42 with Lycoming engines by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. For the theoretical verification the equation error and output error methods in both time and frequency domain within System Identification Programs for AirCraft (SIDPAC), were used. The DATCOM analysis was based on airplane drawings and direct measurement on the DA42 airframe. The results for both methods and error associated with SIDPAC were compared to Digital DATCOM results.

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