Aircraft flight characteristics in conditions of windshear and icing

Abstract Complex weather conditions, especially windshear and icing encounter, have severe effects on aircraft flight safety. The effect of low-altitude windshear and ice accretion on aircraft performance and control has been studied in this paper. With the employment of a windshear model and nonlinear inverse dynamics (NID) method, a low-altitude windshear penetration flight control law is designed. The effect of ice accretion was modeled on the stability and control of an aircraft. Several icing parameters are imported to the small disturbance flight dynamics model to calculate the change of performance, stability and control derivatives between clean and iced aircraft. These derivatives were used to calculate the elevator, the aileron and the rudder step responses to investigate the icing effect. The simulation results indicate that the NID control logic works effectively in the trajectory control of the aircraft during the penetration of windshear. The method used to study the effect of ice accretion on aircraft is valid and it can provide data for real-time calculation for icing encounter.