Windshear estimation along the trajectory of an aircraft

[摘要] The application of the sequential gradient-restoration algorithm (SGRA) to the estimation of the windshear along the trajectory of an aircraft is studied. Based on the measured trajectory data obtained from the digital flight data recorder (DFDR) of Flight Delta 191 (August 2, 1985, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport), a nonlinear least-square problem is formulated. The performance index being minimized measures the deviation of the experimental trajectory (the altitude, the relative velocity, and the pitch attitude angle) from the computed trajectory, obtained by integrating the equations of motion of an aircraft in a vertical plane. Since the thrust and the aerodynamic forces enter directly in this dynamic formulation, a clear picture of the forces acting on the aircraft can be seen. This leads to a good understanding of the behavior of the aircraft during the windshear encounter. The angle of attack is treated as a control, and the power setting is regarded as a known input. By assuming that the manufacturer-supplied aerodynamic and thrust data are dependable, the dynamically estimated vertical wind shows reasonable agreement with that obtained with the kinematic approach. However, the results obtained for the horizontal wind are less satisfactory. Upon modifying the manufacturer-supplied thrust and aerodynamic data with unknown multiplicative factors, a better agreement between the measured and computed trajectory can be achieved. As a consequence, the estimated winds exhibit better accuracy. The inclusion of penalty terms in the performance index being minimized forces the values of the unknown multiplicative factors to be close to unity. The estimation of these factors is important, because it might explain some unusual effects, such as the presence of rain. Upon employing different combinations of the measured trajectory data, the relative importance of each data can be established. The horizontal distance data and the relative velocity data are found to have minor effect on the estimation results. The altitude data affect mostly the vertical wind, and the pitch attitude angle data are crucial to the estimation of both the horizontal and vertical winds.

[发布机构] Rice University