Estimating Ship Deck Aerodynamic Influences on the V-22 using Modified Inverse Simulation Techniques

The first set of EMD V-22 sea trials provided the initial set of flight test data for validating the simulation of flight dynamics in the turbulent and asymmetric environment near the ship deck. A variation of the inverse simulation technique was applied to a set of sea trial events to extract ship effects. Adjustments were applied to the model coefficients based upon free-air errors in these specific events so as to isolate ship effects from other model errors. All work was based on a time domain error function generated by the inverse simulation technique. Analysis of that error was done in both the time and frequency domains. Due to the extensive number of correlated independent variables, error allocation was a unique challenge addressed by filtered cross-plots, power spectral density functions, and transfer functions.