Longitudinal Flying Qualities Prediction for Nonlinear Aircraft

An analysis tool is presented that predicts longitudinal e ying qualities of a piloted aircraft subject to elevator rate limiting and nonlinear stick gradient. The method produces an explicit mathematical pilot model for the pitch attitude tracking task. By performing pilot-in-the-loop simulation, e ying qualities metrics are computed for evaluationofthelevelof e ying qualities.Theproposedmethodisvalidated using thee ightexperimentcalledHAVE LIMITS e own at the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School. Good agreement was obtained between our analytical e ying qualities prediction and Cooper ‐Harper pilot ratings obtained in-e ight for elevator rate limits of 10 ‐157 deg/s.