With this survey paper, the author proposes a new ‘tao’ – a new way of understanding – of how pilots do what they do. Research into the control of purposeful action in the natural world suggests that very rapid, efficient and ‘instinctive’ techniques have evolved based on the time to close on a goal, or close a gap, τ(t), and its derivatives. Purposeful actions involve the closure of one or more physical gaps, each with its own time to close, varying with time. Maintaining a constant rate of change of τ(t) with time (< 1) during an approach will ensure a successful arresting when the gap is closed, but an animal’s strategy can be adapted to the circumstances to achieve either a hard stop (aggressive action with ṫ > 0·5), or a soft stop (gentle action with ṫ < 0·5). Synchronous coupling of two motions, x(t) and y(t), such that the times to close are coupled, τx = kτy, results in the motion gaps x(t) and y(t) being related through a power law, x = Cy1/k, and closing smoothly together; examples of such coupling in the form of pursuit tracking in the natural world abound. Research has also shown that gaps can be closed by following ‘intrinsic’ guides, or self-generated mental models of desired motion, that have particular forms; for example, constant deceleration or constant acceleration. The gathering evidence from research into animal behaviour in the natural-world forms a background for the exploration of flight control in the man-made world. The implications for control theory, flight control developments and flight handling qualities, are considered to be profound. τ-theory suggests that natural control has a particular non-linear, albeit very simple, time varying form and that pilots learn control strategy skills by developing mental models, or internalised schemata, in the form of what are described as ‘τ guides’. In this context the author presents his perspective on flight control, briefly reviewing τ-theory and providing examples from research conducted at The University of Liverpool during the period 1999-2011, including the work of several PhD students. Concepts for guidance algorithms suitable for augmented manual or autonomous control are discussed and the implications for handling qualities developments, particularly relating to flight in degraded visual conditions, are presented. Some outstanding questions pointing directions for future research are raised.

Occurrence of transient starting and stopping loads during tests at high Mach numbers is one of the major problems in intermittent blowdown wind tunnels. It is believed that in order to overcome this problem, the wind tunnel could be started at a low Mach number and low stagnation pressure; the desired high Mach number condition could be reached by continuously changing the nozzle contour while synchronously increasing the stagnation pressure. After completing the tests, the nozzle could be brought back to the initial low Mach number accompanied by synchronous decrease in the stagnation pressure. In such a scenario, it is important to ensure that the pressure regulating valve (PRV) of the wind tunnel delivers and maintains a specified minimum stagnation pressure at any Mach number, so that supersonic breakdown of the test section flow does not occur. In this paper, the problem is formulated based on quasi-steady one-dimensional isentropic equations and numerically solved to predict the time histories of settling chamber pressure and storage tank pressure for a given trajectory of the opening of the PRV, as the Mach number is changed from Mach 1 to 4·0 continuously in four seconds and vice versa. The effects of rate of change of PRV open area and rate of change of Mach number on the stagnation pressure characteristics in the settling chamber and storage tank are predicted. The measured trajectories of the PRV in experiments in the NAL 0·6m transonic wind tunnel are used as input to the prediction program to validate the methodology. Predictions indicate that when the nozzle throat is changed from Mach 1 to 4 in four seconds, the settling chamber stagnation pressure rapidly builds up and approaches the pressure in the storage tank. Predictions show an alarming rise in free stream dynamic pressure during transition from Mach 1 to 4 and vice versa, which needs to be verified through measurements.

This work aims at improving the resilience and damage tolerant properties of CFRP by using cork, which is a natural material with good energy absorption capacity and thermal insulating and vibration damping characteristics. Two types of materials were considered: a sandwich formed by carbon-epoxy facesheets with a cork-epoxy core and a carbon-epoxy laminate with embedded cork granulates. The damage tolerant properties were evaluated by low velocity impact tests according to the type of material. Additionally, this work intends to evaluate the feasibility of using a cork agglomerate combined with CFRP in a sandwich configuration in order to improve the aeroelastic properties of certain types of aerospace components aiming at preventing the occurrence of damage due to flutter. A computational analysis was used to determine the critical flutter speed of a cork based sandwich plate and other conventional materials, such as aluminium alloy and CFRP.

Results are clear about the benefits of using cork based composites either by improving the damage tolerant properties under impact loading or by extending the flight envelope without weight penalty by increasing the flutter critical speed.

The paper presents the estimation of longitudinal aerodynamic parameters from simulated as well as real flight data using an unsteady downwash model. The task of parameter estimation was accomplished using the Maximum Likelihood (ML) method in the frequency domain for the Hansa-3 aircraft. The presented work pertains to the aircraft having a semi-sweptback wing configuration, however, the work reported earlier considered a rectangular wing configuration. A simple vortex system was used to model downwash effects in the longitudinal equations of motion. First, it was established that the indicial lift function had a minor or negligible influence on aircraft motion and on the estimated aerodynamic parameters using simulated data for the configuration of Hansa-3 aircraft. Next, two parameter extraction algorithms were used for parameter estimation using simulated data (with unsteadiness only in downwash) and real flight data (Hansa-3 aircraft). The first algorithm included unsteadiness only in downwash while the second neglected all the unsteady effects. It was observed from the results obtained that if unsteady effects were omitted from the parameter estimation algorithm, the extracted parameters included the effects of unsteady aerodynamics. Therefore, application of the extraction algorithm in the two modes provides a convenient means of separating steady-state and acceleration derivatives.