Multiple air-data sensors placed on different positions on an aircraft are usually expected to provide identical measurements. This is because aircraft are assumed to fly in no-wind or uniform wind conditions. There are cases, however, where an aircraft flies in nonuniform wind vector field with significant variations in magnitude and direction over the dimensions of the aircraft. For example, in an aerial refueling operation, the receiver aircraft needs to fly within the nonuniform wind field induced by the wake of the tanker aircraft. This paper shows that an air-data sensor fault detection and isolation algorithm, if developed with an underlying assumption of identical sensor measurements, yields very high false detection rate when the aircraft enters the wake of another aircraft. This paper also presents a novel modification to the redundant-sensor-based fault detection and isolation algorithm that eliminates this problem. The new method is based on a model of the wind field as a function of relative position with respect to the tanker aircraft. This model is used to compute the expected values of air-data sensor measurements given the position of the receiver aircraft relative to the tanker.
Fault Diagnosis in Air Data Sensors for Receiver Aircraft in Aerial Refueling
Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics ; 38 , 10 ; 1959-1975
2015-07-22
17 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Fault Diagnosis in Air Data Sensors for Receiver Aircraft in Aerial Refueling
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