ITC/USA 2006 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Second Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 23-26, 2006 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / The Image Data Automated Processing System (IDAPS), developed by the 96th Communications Group Test and Analysis Division at Eglin AFB, uses a CAD-based image matching technique to calculate a 6DOF trajectory of a store separation event. The system has been used successfully for single camera release sequences, but needed to be extended for multi-camera releases. This is vital for bomber missions where several cameras are needed to cover a store separation event.

ITC/USA 2005 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2005 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Image Data Automated Processing System (IDAPS), used by the 96th Communications Group, Test and Analysis Division at Eglin AFB, has proven to be a valuable tool for evaluating flight releases of fuel tanks, bombs, missiles, and other stores. The legacy VMS-based system can digitize 16mm or 35mm film and superimpose a computer-generated model over the store, allowing the user to calculate a 6DOF trajectory. This paper describes upgrades to the system, including re-hosting from a VMS/Alpha VME rack-based system to a Linux-based PC system and adding color image capability, increased image resolution, image enhancement, and CADbased modeling of stores.

ITC/USA 2007 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Third Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2007 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Image Data Automated Processing System (IDAPS), developed by the 96th Communications Group Test and Analysis Division at Eglin AFB, uses a CAD-based image matching technique to calculate a trajectory of a store separation event. The latest evolution of this system has been in production for several years and has proven to be both an accurate and a valuable tool for evaluating flight releases of bombs, fuel tanks, missiles, and other stores. This paper describes a prototype capability that is being developed for assessing fin and wing deployment angles.

The aim of this thesis is to develop a test facility in order to validate the safe separation of a store model from the aircraft model with the analysis of the acquired data. Different alternatives are considered in the conceptual design and a facility is selected which contains the rail constructed 5 meters above the ground. 300 meter test range is used to accelerate the aircraft model, attached to the carriage with solid rocket engines. The concept is to accelerate the carriage within the first 100 meters, to perform the separation of the model at the desired velocity when the rocket engine is burned out, and in the last 100 meters, to decelerate the carriage in order to recover the models. After the parts of the carriage are designed with respect to the requirements of the separation and completing the similitude study of scaled models with the ratio of 1/8, separation tests are performed. These tests are constrained with 0.9 Mach due to the store and test aircraft limitations. Doppler radar is issued to measure the velocity and photogrammetry method is used to validate and analyze the separation and to obtain the vertical trajectory of the store model. Measured trajectory of the store model is compared with the trajectory of the full scale store.

ITC/USA 2014 Conference Proceedings / The Fiftieth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 20-23, 2014 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, CA / Flight tests and flight safety are tightly coupled. For a given experimental test flight, the main objective to be achieved is related to the test bed and crew integrity (i.e. Bring back the test bed in one piece). Furthermore, the aircraft operational safety (i.e. continued airworthiness) relies into the accuracy of gathered information, provided by the airborne Flight Test Instrumentation (FTI) system. Typically, the FTI system includes: a data acquisition system; a transmission system; a data recorder; multiple sensors and auxiliary equipment such as Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Receiver. In a specific Flight Test Campaign (FTC), such as external stores separation FTC, the associated risk is high because the non-linear and unpredicted aerodynamics couplings between the released store and the aircraft structure (e.g. wings) could lead to a catastrophic collision condition. Typically, the setup for such FTC is a big technical challenge for the instrumentation group because the determination of six degrees of freedom (6Dof) trajectory of the release store becomes mandatory. Such information could be by the means of an optical tracking system that requires the integration of two or more hi-speed hi-resolution video cameras into FTI. Unfortunately, the FTI and the Real-Time Telemetry Link (RTL) limited bandwidth imposes several restrictions for the development and implementation of a real-time application to be used at the Ground Telemetry System (GTS) for the verification of the separation safety and the validation of the test point. This paper, presents the implementation of computer vision techniques and Camshift algorithm as an approach to tracking individual track targets on the store surface which can be perform onboard and in real time or near real time. The development of the algorithm is presented as well several experimental test results that use videos frames gathered from previous FTC executed by Instituto de Pesquisas e Ensaios em Voo (Flight Test and Research Institute - IPEV). Preliminary results present satisfactory performance.

ITC/USA 2013 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Ninth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 21-24, 2013 / Bally's Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV / External stores separation campaign is very risky therefore its preparation presents a big technical challenge for the instrumentation group. Determination of store trajectory requires the integration of two hi-speed hi-resolution video cameras into FTI. Link bandwidth precludes the development of a real-time application to be used at the Ground Telemetry System (GTS) for separation validation. To improve efficiency IPEV, with FINEP funding, is developing a system where the separation trajectory is computed on-board and in real-time. Computed parameters are merged into FTI to be processed into GTS and compared to the estimated trajectory. The proposed architecture is presented and discussed.

In this thesis, store separation from two different configurations are solved using computational methods. Two different commercially available CFD codes / CFD-FASTRAN, an implicit Euler solver, and an unsteady panel method solver USAERO, coupled with integral boundary layer solution procedure are used for the present computations. The computational trajectory results are validated against the available experimental data of a generic wing-pylon-store configuration at Mach 0.95. Major trends of the separation are captured. Same configuration is used for the comparison of unsteady panel method with Euler solution at Mach 0.3 and 0.6. Major trends are similar to each other while some differences in lateral and longitudinal displacements are observed. Trajectories of a fueltank separated from an F-16 fighter aircraft wing and full aircraft configurations are found at Mach 0.3 using only the unsteady panel code. The results indicate that the effect of fuselage is to decrease the drag and to increase the side forces acting on the separating fueltank from the aircraft. It is also observed that the yawing and rolling directions of the separating fueltank are reversed when it is separated from the full aircraft configuration when compared to the separation from the wing alone configuration.