Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2021
26th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Development of a Tool for Pilot Induced Oscillations (PIO) Testing in Flight Simulator
Submission Author:
Jorge H Bidinotto , SP
Co-Authors:
Gabriel Daher de Alencar Neves, Adriano Bruschi, Jorge H Bidinotto
Presenter: Jorge H Bidinotto
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2021.COB2021-0036
Abstract
PIO (Pilot Induced Oscillations), also known as A-PC (aircraft-Pilot Coupling), is defined as “sustained or uncontrollable oscillations resulting from efforts of the pilot to control the aircraft”. Despite being a problem studied for decades, it is still a focus of great interest, since new technologies inserted on flight controls require that this topic be constantly revisited. An important piece of evidence to be considered is that accidents caused by PIO still occur with an undesired recurrence, and still happens in aircraft with a high technological level, as in the case of SAAB-Gripen, which presented two occurrences with loss of prototypes during the aircraft testing phase, or incidents, such as happened in an Airbus A330 aircraft in 2014 in Montreal, Canada. In order to stimulate and enable research on this phenomenon, the Group of Human Factors in Aviation, of the Department of Aeronautics Engineering from EESC / USP developed a tool to be inserted in the Flight Simulator of the institution, which allows tests with pilots exposed to this phenomenon. The tool consists of a system based on MATLAB®, which presents an artificial horizon and a synthetic task to be coursed by the test pilot. The aircraft dynamics inserted is from the Boeing 747 obtained from the literature. The developed tool permits the test proponent to change the task to be pursued by the pilot and to make changes in the dynamics of the aircraft, allowing to increase or decrease the aircraft proneness to PIO. The used flight simulator has a moving base since the pertinent literature points out that tests of this phenomenon, in fixed-base simulators, tend to induce overreaction to the pilots during tests. This work describes the tool developed, so that it can be replicated on different platforms, enabling the measurement of responses from different pilots subject to various flight conditions and/or tasks that would be unfeasible to be performed on flight tests, given the cost and the risk involved. It is hoped, therefore, that the use of this tool can generate a mass of relevant data, strengthening research on this topic and generating a positive impact on flight safety.
Keywords
Pilot Induced Oscillations, Flight Simulmator, Synthetic Task
