Multi-hole probe and elaboration algorithms for the reconstruction of the air data parameters

The determination of the air data parameters such as velocity, static pressure, angle of attack and angle of sideslip, coming from the local pressures and the local angle measurements, play an important role in the aircraft mission. The work results from a study on the Flush Air Data Systems (FADSs), constituted by a set of pressure slots, directly obtained on the aircraft fuselage and the experiences, reached at the Department of Aerospace Engineering of the University of Pisa, for the integration of the air data in the Flight Control System Fly-By-Wire (FCS-FBW) of the aircraft Aermacchi M346. The authors have developed an innovative, non-intrusive multi-hole probe for the local pressure measurement. A computational fluid dynamic analysis (CFD) has been carried out to define a geometrical configuration and a preliminary database. An innovative approach has been used for the reconstruction of the air data parameters through artificial neural networks, calibrated on the aerodynamic database coming from the CFD analysis.