Design and implementation of automatic flight test data analysis tools supporting the development and certification of fixed-wing aircraft

This thesis deals with the development of software applications and hardware devices to enable the automatic analysis of flight test data from a fixed-wing aircraft and to provide real-time feedback to the flight crew regarding the outcome of each test point performed. The ultimate mission of this work is to make flight activities more efficient and safer, allowing immediate detection of unsafe flight conditions and instantaneous verification of the pass/fail criteria for each of the performed tests. This is especially relevant for flutter flight testing, given the risks associated with this type of tests, but it's also applicable to other kinds of flight tests, such as climb/glide performance analyses or level flight performance testing. The goal was achieved by reviewing the traditional data analysis and data reduction methods used for the post-processing of flight test data, developing scripts and devices to automatize such analyses, while still leaving room for user interaction through apposite user interfaces, and finally by coherently testing and validating the developed applications. As a result, it was possible to provide tools to automatically analyze flutter flight tests in real time, as well as tools to perform data analysis on climb and glide performance tests and level flight performance tests. Future developments of this work will allow for an automatic and standard data analysis on any kind of flight test. The work was carried out during an internship at Pipistrel Italia s.r.l., to support the development and certification flights of the fixed-wing aircraft designed and manufactured by the company.