TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF THE INERTIA PROPERTIES OF AN AIRCRAFT

A feasibility study for the measurement of the inertia properties of a full-scale aircraft is presented. The employment of the InTenso+ system developed at Politecnico di Milano is discussed referring to the measurement of the inertia properties of a fighter aircraft. Preliminarily, the InTenso+ system is introduced to highlight its basic features. Then, referring to the addressed non standard aeronautic application, the accuracy of the measurement method is investigated. Both analytical and numerical analyses are presented to estimate the uncertainties of the measurement method. The measurement of the inertia properties of a full scale aircraft is technically feasible within the accuracy quantified in this report. Economic and financial issues are not critical, being the InTenso+ system very simple and consequently inexpensive (the implementation costs are not given in this paper as they depend on the customization of the system). The main result of this paper is that, maybe for the first time since the beginning of aeronautical engineering, the measurement of the full inertia tensor and of the location of the centre of gravity of aircrafts appears feasible in a simple way. Such a measurement can be performed by using the InTenso+ system.