A Simulation Study on Identifying Aircraft Touchdown Point by using In-flight Recorded Data
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Publication Date: |
08-2010 |
| Authors: |
Andrew Cheng, PhD. Ouyang, M. |
Cheng, A.Y. & Ouyang, M. (2010) A Simulation Study on Identifying Aircraft Touchdown Point by Using In-flight Recorded Data, AIAA Guidance Navigation & Control
Abstract
Accurate information of operational aircraft touchdown points is critical to the safety of terminal area operations. Although the current aviation system tracks a number of landing parameters for commercial operations, the operational touchdown performance is not readily measured and recorded. The research described herein designed an algorithm to compute the aircraft touchdown point, and demonstrated its effectiveness with 72 landing runs performed on a high-fidelity fullflight simulator. These simulated flights were conducted with a Latin Square experiment design. The accuracy of the computational methods was evaluated by comparing the calculated touchdown points to the high precision position reference recorded by the flight simulator. The largest discrepancy between recorded and calculated touchdown points was 246 feet, the smallest was 0.5 feet, and the average was 117 feet.
