Longitudinal Flying Qualities Prediction for Nonlinear Aircraft

An analysis tool is presented that predicts longitudinal flying qualities of a piloted aircraft subject to elevator rate limiting and nonlinear stick gradient. The method produces an explicit mathematical pilot model for the pitch attitude tracking task. By performing pilot-in-the-loop simulation, flying qualities metrics are computed for evaluation of the level of flying qualities. The proposed method is validated using the flight experiment called HAVE LIMITS flown at the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School. Good agreement was obtained between our analytical flying qualities prediction and Cooper-Harper pilot ratings obtained in-flight for elevator rate limits of 10-157 deg/s. (Author)