Aeronautics lidar revisited - Towards lidar-based gust and turbulence measurement for aircraft load alleviation control

Abstract

We give an overview of the authors' and their institutions' latest R&D activities regarding Direct-Detection Doppler-Wind-Lidar (DD-DWL) for the usage as remote flow sensor on civil aircraft. The purpose of such a lidar, when flying through Clear Air Turbulence (CAT) at cruise altitudes, is delivering sufficient turbulent wind information for feeding a chain of gust reconstruction, control and command modules. Hence, aerodynamic effects on the aircraft structure shall be mitigated. The long-standing record of the ONERA and DLR lidar groups in aeronautics' application lidar allowed us recently to team up in the European Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking (CAJU) co-financed project UP Wing with the agenda of maturing the critical technologies (like laser, Doppler spectrometric receiver, etc.) and validating these at component and system level with extensive ground and also airborne tests. Here, we present the main bricks of this technology suite, an overview of some prior and actual achievements and some perspective.