A Symmetry Calibration Procedure for Sensor-to-Airframe Misalignments in Wind Tunnel Data

We propose a calibration method that transforms data from wind tunnel experiments into a coordinate frame where asymmetries with respect to the symmetry plane of most fixed-wing aircraft are minimized in a least-squares sense. The method applies to all types of aircraft that include a symmetry plane but is particularly relevant for small and low-cost unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Our approach is simple to implement using standard nonlinear program (NLP) solvers. Results for a wind-tunnel data set of a small fixed-wing UAV demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed calibration method.