Longitudinal Flying Qualities Evaluation Method for Receiver in Probe and Drogue Aerial Refueling

The receiver aircraft needs to have the ability to accurately track the flight path during the probe and drogue aerial refueling, but the conventional military flying qualities standards are insufficient. In this paper, a man-machine closed-loop system for the probe and drogue refueling task is established, and a digital virtual flight simulation method is used to simulate closed-loop tracking tasks. Based on the task-dependent handling-quality metric derived by simulation results, the pilot’s perception of task difficulty is evaluated, so as to reflect the flying qualities of the receiver to track the flight path. By comparing the handling-quality metric with the Cooper-Harper rating obtained from the mission-based human-in-the-loop flight test, quantitative requirements for handling-quality metric are proposed. The conclusions can provide important theoretical reference for the design of flight control laws for the probe and drogue refueling mode and the simulation method proposed in this paper has an extensive application prospect in the prediction of flying qualities.