Experimental and Computational Investigation of a Highly Flexible Airframe Taxiing Over an Uneven Runway for Aircraft Vibration Testing

Ground Vibration Test (GVT) is an important phase of the development of new aircraft prototypes to experimentally determine the modal parameters of aircraft prototypes. These modal parameters are used to validate and update the finite element model of the aircraft for reliable predictions of their structural, aeroelastic and aeroservoelastic responses. Due to the high cost and the extensive preparations of such tests, a new method of vibration testing called Taxi Vibration Test (TVT) was recently proposed and investigated by the German Institute for Aerospace Research as an alternative method to conventional GVT. In this presented work, an experimental and a computational setups were designed and constructed to further investigate the applicability of TVT to airframes encountered in fixed-wing autonomous aerial systems, and the influence of certain fundamental parameters, namely the taxiing speed, the LG-shock-absorber's damping coefficient and the bump shape or geometry, on the outcome of the test.