Meta Aircraft Flight Dynamics

A meta aircraft is an air vehicle composed of a set of independent aircraft that are connected together in flight to form a larger composite aircraft. This paper explores the dynamics of meta aircraft systems with a focus on the changes in the aircraft flight dynamic modes and flexible modes of the system. Specifically, when aircraft are connected, basic flight dynamic modes such as the phugoid, short period, dutch roll, spiral, and roll modes change as a function of the number of connected aircraft. For aircraft connected in a wing-tip-to-wing-tip configuration, the longitudinal modes remain largely invariant with respect to the number of aircraft, whereas lateral modes are variable for both tip-to-tail and wing-tip-to-wing-tip connection configurations. In addition, connected aircraft exhibit complex flexible modes that change based on the characteristics of the connection joint and the number of connected aircraft. These conclusions are reached using a rigid six-degree-of-freedom representation for a s...

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