Aircraft System Identification using Integrated Software Tools

1. SUMMARY System identification is a complicated, multi-step process requiring considerable expertise to perform. In a traditional flight test program, the elapsed time from flying the aircraft and gathering data until the simulation is updated can be months or even years. The primary reasons behind the long times between flight test and simulation update are the labor-intensive processes of data processing and system identification. Too much time is spent manipulating data and models to the format needed by the disparate programs. The Integrated Data Evaluation and Analysis System (IDEAS) gathers existing software into a distributed client/server architecture that integrates all of the tools required to process flight test data. Using consistent data handling routines and a networked communication scheme, IDEAS can distribute tasks among heterogeneous processors while maintaining an integrated working environment. Tools are available for data preprocessing, filtering, consistency checking, aircraft simulation, equation error and output error identification as well as communication paths to other existing programs such as frequency domain identification routines. An innovative modeling technique provides uniform access to complex, nonlinear model representations. A single, intuitive description of the identification model is processed by each of the different system identification methods with no recoding or rehosting required.