Flight Testing and Test Instrumentation of PHOENIX

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Scientific paper

Within the frame of the German national ASTRA program, the need for in-flight experimentation as a key element in the development of the next generation launcher was addressed by the Phoenix project. The Phoenix 1 flight test vehicle was designed to demonstrate the un-powered horizontal landing of a representative, winged RLV configuration. The Phoenix 1 flight test vehicle is downscaled from the reference RLV shape "Hopper", with the dimensions of 7.8m overall length, 3.8m span, and 1200kg mass. In order to be representative of a full scale RLV, the scaling method preserves all features challenging the automatic landing from the flight control point of view. These are in particular the poor flying qualities of the static unstable vehicle and the high landing velocity of 71m/s, which is same as for the full scale vehicle. The landing demonstration scenario comprises a drop from the helicopter approximately 6km ahead of the runway threshold at 2.4km above runway level. The subsequent free flight includes an accelerating dive to merge with a steep final approach path representative of an RLV, followed by a long flare, touch down on the runway, and rollout to standstill. Besides its mandatory avionics system, the vehicle is also equipped with an additional flight test instrumentation to identify local aerodynamic flow and structural stress. This FTI system is designed to collect data by recording about 130 sensor signals during flight. This test instrumentation system was operated during a test campaign dedicated to verify the aerodynamic data base of Phoenix in the Dutch-German Wind-tunnel (DNW) in August 2003 and during three automatic landing flight tests after helicopter drop in May 2004. Post flight analysis of these data allows to validate the design models and the development tools in order to establish a flight validated data base for future work. This paper gives an overview on the Phoenix system including the flight test instrumentation, the test program and the results and lessons learned from the different campaigns.

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