Wavelet Analysis of Airfield Road Surface Roughness and Dynamic Response of Aircraft

Airfield road surface roughness is the major impact source of aircraft, discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is usually applied to analyze road surface roughness. However, DFT has serious limitations, especially it has no time domain analysis function. To overcome this problem, wavelet transform for analyzing airfield road surface roughness and aircraft's dynamic response was proposed. Autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model (Gersch W. et al, 1976) was used to establish time series of road surface roughness. Asymmetrical mathematical model of aircraft was presented via Quarter Car Simulation (QCS). Time series of road surface roughness was input, and aircraft's vibration response corresponding to this roughness input was obtained. The results show that correlation between aircraft's dynamic response and road surface roughness is linear in a certain frequency range. Aircraft's vibration responses increase with road surface roughness excitation. Road surface roughness also can be deduced via aircraft's dynamic response. Wavelet analysis method can be applied to establish correlation between road surface roughness and aircraft's response.