FULLY STRUCTURED AERODYNAMIC MODEL FOR PARAMETER IDENTIFICATION OF A RE-ENTRY EXPERIMENTAL VEHICLE

Vehicle preflight aerodynamic databases are frequently validated and improved using system identification techniques that require the availability of flight data and the definition of suitable aerodynamic models. In this framework, the paper presents a novel theoretical aerodynamic model to be used for the aerodynamic identification of a lifting body in subsonic, transonic, and supersonic regimes. The proposed model is based on the general properties of the continuity equation in the von Kármán form. Each aerodynamic coefficient incorporates free parameters to be estimated from the flight data analysis and takes into account the simultaneous effects of the several vehicle state variables. The proposed model was applied to the identification from the flight data of an experimental vehicle of the Italian Aerospace Research Centre. Identification results show that the model is able to perform an excellent fitting of the aerodynamic coefficients experimented in flight by the vehicle.