Rotorcraft shipboard flight test analytic options

Flight testing is required to determine the aircraft suitability for both land and ship-based mission scenarios. Classical test pilot techniques are used to evaluate the air vehicle in a land-based environment using highly instrumented vehicles. Shipboard testing may be performed at remote locations using uninstrumented fleet aircraft. The ship test must be scheduled far in advance, and the test location may be an area with a low probability of desired high ambient winds and sea state. This means the test may have to be repeated to generate a large enough operational envelope to support required mission applications. This also implies that each test component is a system and that in a systems approach to rotorcraft/ship testing it is very difficult to optimize all the system components. Work is ongoing to develop a virtual rotorcraft/ship test support capability. The system components in the virtual approach include the rotorcraft and ship models, the ship airwake and motion models, and the integration and validation of the systems and subsystems. In the virtual systems approach to rotorcraft/ship testing, parameter sensitivity studies can be readily performed on each system component. Considerable progress has been made in basic rotorcraft and ship airwake modeling, and in linear superposition integration of these model components. This work reviews the status of ongoing small business innovative research programs and internal science and technology programs to demonstrate virtual real-time and non-real time options to simulate the rotorcraft shipboard landing task. The paper also addresses ongoing work to develop an improved helicopter/ship deck landing analytic capability and discuss ongoing work to develop an enhanced visual landing aid personal computer test tool to help support future night time and/or low visibility shipboard testing. The requirement to develop a fully coupled aircraft/ship/airwake/motion model to better support future multi-rotorcraft shipboard testing in a virtual environment was also be discussed.