Iron Bird Facility for Ground-Based Testing of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Progress in aerospace science and measurement technology introduces new potentials for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) as platforms for the evaluation of novel aircraft designs and information acquisition concepts. With the increasing degree of automation and aircraft mass however, compliance with functional and reliability requirements becomes challenging. Therefore, a ground testing facility must be developed, where selection and sizing of on-board hardware is supported by analysis of electrical and mechanical characteristics. The present work describes a test facility which features a physical duplicate of the electromechanical setup of an advanced UAV currently in development. This aircraft serves as a case study, where design and testing are closely interlinked. After the presentation of the approach methodology and a technical description of the infrastructure, results from the ongoing study are discussed.     «

Progress in aerospace science and measurement technology introduces new potentials for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) as platforms for the evaluation of novel aircraft designs and information acquisition concepts. With the increasing degree of automation and aircraft mass however, compliance with functional and reliability requirements becomes challenging. Therefore, a ground testing facility must be developed, where selection and sizing of on-board hardware is supported by analysis of electric...     »