Solutions for Reducing Severity in Aircraft Flat-Spin Recovery

Aircraft spin is special category of stall and defined as an autorotation in a downward helical pattern with a higher yaw rate than roll and pitch rate. Among the various modes of aircraft spin, flat-spin being the most ruthless form and characterized by a high angle of attack (𝛼) in the range of 65° to 90°. The flat spin is particularly dangerous since the efficiency of aerodynamic control surfaces is greatly diminished due to nearly perpendicular airflow. In this seminar, I will talk about, different flight dynamic and control-based solutions that I developed for recovery (1. Recovery Using Primary Control Surfaces, 2. Recovery Using Optimally Deflected Deployable Fin, 3. Strategic Thrust Vector Control Based Recovery, 4. Vertical Thrust Based Recovery, 5. Recovery Satisfying Aerodynamic and Load Factor Constraints, 6. Recovery Using Model Predictive Control, and 7. Decoupled Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion Control for Recovery) to reduce the fatality of the flat-spin in terms of excessive altitude loss regulating the survivability post aircraft recovery. Moreover, an investigation is performed on how the wind and wind share impact the recovery profile. The flat-spin recovery profile is demonstrated on a mathematical model of F-18 high alpha research vehicle (HARV) to test the efficacy of the proposed methods.

Speaker: Dr. Salahudden

Biography: Dr. Salahudden is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Aerospace Engineering (AE) at Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, India. Before this, he was the Deputy Manager in Flight Controls Department at TATA Aerospace and Defence. Prior to that, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Auburn University in the AE Department, United States. He earned a Ph.D. in AE from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK), India, in 2022. He received a M.Tech in AE from IIT Kanpur in 2018 and a B.Tech in AE from SRM University Chennai, India in 2016. His research interests include the areas of flight mechanics, aircraft dynamics, aircraft design, control law design for flight vehicles, aircraft simulator design, and autopilot design. He published numerous reputable journals and conferences based on his research. He is also serving as a reviewer for several reputed journals. He has received many academic and research awards, such as Outstanding PhD Thesis Award, Excellent Undergraduate Project Award, and Outstanding Academic Performance Award.