Preliminary examination of C-130 flight loads in aerial firefighting operations
Date
2022-06-20Author
Kliment, Linda K.
Rokhsaz, Kamran
Ali, Syed Junaid
Nelson, John A.
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Linda K. Kliment, Kamran Rokhsaz, Syed Junaid Ali and John Nelson. "Preliminary Examination of C-130 Flight Loads in Aerial Firefighting Operations," AIAA 2022-4013. AIAA AVIATION 2022 Forum. June 2022.
Abstract
In-flight recorded data from two EC-130Q and two L-382G aircraft have been used to analyze their flight loads while flown as aerial firefighters. The data was collected over the calendar years 2016-2019 and consisted of 928 hours of flight time. The analysis has been limited to airborne phases of flight. Vertical accelerations have been filtered using a low-pass filter with an 8-Hz cutoff frequency to remove the any influence of the local or structural vibrations. Gust and maneuver load factor spectra have been developed for various altitude bands. The magnitude and the frequency of the incremental load factors have been shown to be most severe during the drop phases of firefighting missions. Flight loads spectra have been compared with those from various other operations.
Description
Work created by the federal government is in the public domain. This effort was funded by the United States Forest Service through the Grant 17-G-004 administered by the Federal Aviation Administration.