Simulation and Control Law Development for Autonomous UAV Artificial Icing Testing

A simulation environment has been developed to support the design, evaluation, and testing of a flight control system for evaluating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in artificial icing conditions. The control system is to provide autonomous approach to, station-keeping behind, and exit away from the Army’s CH-47 Helicopter In-flight Spray System (HISS) aircraft, a specially equipped test article capable of generating artificial icing environments using a drop-down spray boom. The simulation tool provides models for multiple aircraft operating near each other’s trailed wake system, and can be run in real-time using interfaces to simulated and actual system hardware prior to flight testing. The design of the simulation environment allows for expansion to model other manned and unmanned aircraft operating near one another.