National Aviation University

Theory, methods and procedures of aircraft-in-flight external outline aerodynamical state diagnostics

Aircraft performance characteristics evaluation is the point of interest for all aviation countries of many years. Great amount of publications in Ukraine and other states are focusing on such questions as:

-  Aircraft surface condition influence on fuel waste;

-   Rivet head drag determination;

-   Wing permanent deformation influence on the takeoff and landing characteristics;

-  Aircraft resistance evaluation when pressurization and so forth.

The most of these researches do not consider questions connected with aircraft-in-flight external outline diagnostics. The majority of the publications just state the facts of the aircraft performance characteristics change when long-term usage under the conditions of degenerative factors action. At the moment, when the wave deformation of aircraft surface appears, the fuel waste per km of flight increases during the further flight operation and so on. Such studies do not consider the questions of external aircraft outline state diagnostic as well as questions of external aircraft outline damage influence on aircraft performance characteristics.

Strategy development of aviation use in local wars motivates member-countries of the NATO and USA particularly to study immediately the influence of different external aircraft outline damage on their performance characteristics. Moreover, the problem of early diagnosis of the damage moment, place and degree appears. The diagnosis is appointed for aircraft control reconfiguration. The active studies aimed for finding solution of the stated problem started 5 years ago and last till now in the member-countries of the NATO. National Aviation University carries out researches in this field as well.

  

Despite of unspecific way of the achievements representation in the stated problem solution, the comparison analysis of the approaches to the researches in this field shows that scientific development made at NAU passes ahead of the same investigations made simultaneously at other countries. Moreover, taking into account current experience it is possible to obtain competitive results that can be applied to different branches of the national economy.