ABSTRACT |
The National Aerospace Laboratory(NAL)and thehicle,a 37% subscale model of HOPE,is transported by a helicopter with hanging equipment to a predetermined release point at a height of 1,500 meters,and then released at a velociry of 45 meters per second(90knots)to land automatically.Before releasing,the vehicle is supported at its center of gravity with gimbals to fly with five degree of dreedom.This configuration,named constrained flight,enaables the vehicle to be released without sudden transient motoin.Furthermore,before the experiments,several constrained flight tests will be conducted to verify the control system’s performance,and the aerodynamic characteristics will be pre-estimated by wind tunnel tests.This report describes a mathematical model of the ALFLEX constrained flight system and analysis of its dynamic characteristics.In the constrained flight,different from free flight,there are modes in which the vehicle and the hanging equipment oscillate like a dual-pendulum.On the other hand,the modes of vehicle’s attitude motion resemble those in free flight,so that the same control law can be applied to stabilize the vehicle’s attitude as in free flight |