A self-validating flush air data sensing system

The flush air data sensing technology, which is one of the most advanced flight parameters measuring strategies in the world, can be employed in the flight environments with high speed, large angle of attack, and fine aircraft stealth design. As the source of acquiring flight parameters, its measurement value quality will affect the control precision of aircrafts directly, and even threaten the safety. To enhance reliability of flight parameters, a novel prototype of self-validating air data systems (SVADS) is proposed, in which the merits of flush air data system and self-validating sensors technologies are fully combined. The SVADS not only can output the traditional flight parameters such as angle of attack, angle of sideslip, altitude and Mach number, but also can perform the fault self-detection, self-diagnosis and status self-estimation. The failure can be substituted by an optimal estimated value by means of fault recovery, and the working status identifier and dynamic uncertainty of above flight parameters are also described. A real experimental platform of SVADS was designed to acquire the output signals, and further verify the self-validating functions.