COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FLIGHT TEST TRAJECTORY DATA FROM PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND CFD FOR AN AIR-DELIVERED STORE

Store separation studies are one of the most critical studies to be carried out during the development of an aircraft delivered store as it involves the safety of the pilots and the aircraft. These studies bring out the safe release envelop of different stations for the stores under study. The pre-flight simulations are necessary for obtaining flight clearance from the certifying agencies for military airworthiness. The preliminary flight tests are usually carried out for benign conditions in the operating envelop and the post-flight simulations with the initial conditions as obtained from the flight data recorder validates the simulations carried out and instill confidence in carrying out the flight trials for the extreme points of the flight envelop. One of the ways of extracting the trajectory parameters of the store separation from the aircraft is by the photogrammetry of the video of the store separation. In the current study, the trajectory parameters of the store separation of the store under study were extracted using a commercial software, TrackEye and were compared with the unsteady 6DoF coupled CFD simulation carried out using Simcenter STAR-CCM+ + CFD Software.