| This thesis presents a general method of autonomously generating emergency flight trajectories for post-failure aircraft connecting the aircraft with a desired landing site. This emergency flight planner utilizes a simplified aircraft kinematic model allowing rapid computation of aircraft configuration changes from a sequence of trimmed, i.e., non-accelerating, flight conditions. The complete set of attainable trimmed flight conditions yields an accurate approximation of the post-failure flight envelope, guaranteeing the production of feasible flight plans. To facilitate accurate results, the feasibility and configuration impact of the dynamic transitions between these trim states must also be addressed. The flight planner uses a combination of discrete search and local continuous optimization techniques to piece together from compiled trim and transition databases, finding the necessary flight segment durations that produce the desired feasible flight trajectory to a known desired landing site. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
