Design of a Parallel Robot with a Large Workspace for the Functional Evaluation of Aircraft Dynamics beyond the Nominal Flight Envelope

This paper summarizes the development of a robotic system for the analysis of aircraft dynamics within and beyond the nominal flight envelope. The paper proposes the development of a parallel robot and its motion cueing algorithm to attain a reasonable workspace with adequate motion capabilities to facilitate the testing of aircraft stall and fault manoeuvrability scenarios. The proposed design combines two parallel mechanisms and aims to provide six degrees of freedom motion with a much larger motion envelope than the conventional hexapods in order to realize the manoeuvrability matching of aircraft dynamics near and beyond the upset flight envelopes. Finally the paper draws a comparative evaluation of motion capabilities between the proposed motion platform and a conventional hexapod based on Stewart configuration in order to emphasize the significance of the design proposed herein.