Master's Thesis: Estimation of Aircraft Parameters for Flight Mechanics Assessment (w/m/f)

Here’s what you can expect:

The DLR (German Aerospace Center) Institute of Flight Systems is continuously applying and evolving methods for aircraft flight dynamics analysis and evaluation. This includes a broad range of analytical considerations for conceptual aircraft design, numerical real-time aircraft simulation, piloted full-flight simulator tests and flight experiments. Such analyses require an aerodynamic dataset.
However, especially during early stages of aircraft design, detailed data is not or not yet readily available. In this case, approximation methods are an important element. These deliver relevant parameters with a very low amount of computational effort, which can then be used to provide general trends and tendencies with respect to flight mechanics.

This Master’s thesis deals with the estimation of aircraft parameters in the preliminary design stage. For this purpose, different approximations for aerodynamics and weight and balance shall be collected, compared, and assessed. In addition, a sensitivity analysis is to be performed to investigate the importance of different parameters and their impact on flight dynamics analyses.

Your Tasks:

• Literature study
• Selection and comparison of approximations for aerodynamics and mass distribution
• Implementation of the approximations in Matlab
• Comparison of approximation results with available aircraft data (including DLR research fleet and literature values) and assessment of validity
• Generation of full aerodynamic dataset for chosen aircraft using the selected approximations and application for flight mechanics analyses and a sensitivity study with regard to the parameters’ effects
• Written documentation of the work

Your profile:

• Bachelor’s degree of Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or a comparable field of studies
• Interest in flight dynamics and aerodynamics
• Experience with MATLAB/Simulink