Aircraft-Pilot System Modeling and Pilot Control Behavior Research for Airdrop Task

Adverse aircraft-pilot coupling during the process of transport airdrop can lower the level of flight safety. Pilot's rational control behavior can avoid adverse aircraft-pilot coupling. In this paper, the model of aircraft-pilot system consisting of motion body model, task model and pilot model is built at first. Three different pilot control methods are investigated for airdrop. The first one is continuous pitch compensatory control, the second one is elevator maintenance control, and the third one is precognitive control based on the knowledge of flight tendency during airdrop. Two different precognitive control methods are designed. Models of those pilot control methods are constituted and numerical simulations are conducted. In addition, for exploration on feasibility of those methods, a series of pilot-in-loop real-time experiments are performed in a fixed flight simulator. Real-time experiments match well with numerical simulation results which validate different effects of those methods on airdrop. The aircraft performs most satisfactorily under the two precognitive control methods. The study is of considerable significance to investigate of which kind of pilot control method to be applied during airdrop.