Enhanced Synchrosqueezing Transform for Detecting Non-Traditional Flight Modes in High Angle of Attack Maneuvers

Due to nonlinear aerodynamics, “non-traditional” flight modes may appear in longitudinal and lateral/directional dynamics once an aircraft experiences a high angle of attack and rapid maneuvers. Signal decomposition techniques are required to uncover these modes since they are hidden in flight characteristics. This study represents the Enhanced SynchroSqueezing Transform (ESST) for the extraction of “non-traditional” flight modes from flight data. Developed in the framework of the SynchroSqueezing Transform (SST), the ESST decomposes an Amplitude- and Frequency-Modulated (AMFM) signal into Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs). This process is optimized using the Genetic Algorithm (GA). Numerical investigations are performed to confirm the validity of the ESST. Both quantitative criteria for the fitness of the IMFs and qualitative study of the Time–Frequency Representations (TFRs) suggest that the ESST may perform better than the SST in decomposing nonlinear and non-stationary signals. Then, a method is proposed to find the instantaneous characteristics of the flight modes obtained by the ESST. The ESST analyzes an aircraft’s longitudinal and lateral flight data in post-stall maneuvers. The TFRs of flight parameters verify the existence of identical flight modes at different flight conditions. The IMFs are separated, and their instantaneous characteristics are computed. In addition, the ESST modes are compared to conventional modes. The results indicate that the ESST is capable of obtaining both classical oscillatory modes, such as Short Period (SP) and Dutch Roll (DR), and “non-traditional” modes. In the end, coupled modes are identified by comparing longitudinal and lateral IMFs.