Calibration of 5-hole Probe for Flow Angles from Advanced Technologies Testing Aircraft System Flight Data

Abstract

This paper describes the investigations carried out to calibrate the 5-hole probe for flow angles from advanced technologies testing aircraft system flight data. The flight tests were carried
out with gear up and at nominal mid-centre of gravity location for two landing flap positions, Of= IN and 14°. Dynamic manoeuvres were executed to excite the short period and Dutch roll mode of the aircraft. In addition, pull up, push down and steady sideslip manoeuvres were also carried out. The data compatibility check on the recorded flight data has been carried out using maximum likelihood output error algorithm to estimate the bias, scale factor, and time delay in the pressure measurements from the 5-hole probe mounted on a noseboom in front of aircraft nose . Through a way of kinematic consistency checking, flight-validated scale factors, biases, and time delays are determined for the differential pressure measurements for both angle of attack and angle of sideslip. Also, the dynamic pressure measurement is found to have time delays. Based on the earlier investigations, it is once again confirmed that the measurements of attitude angles, obtained from the inertial platform, clearly indicate time delays referred to the other signals like linear accelerations and angular rates which are measured with the dedicated flight instrumentation package.

The identified time delays in attitude angles agreed well with the inertial platform specifications. The estimates of sensitivity coefficients and scale factors from the flight data analysis correlates reasonably well with the manufacturer Rosemount calibration curves for the tested Mach range 0.23-0.53 . The flight data analysis at Mach number of about 0.59 indicate
Mach dependency for the angle of attack.