Evaluation of LRC Spectral Analyses of Simulated Gust Velocity Data

The NASA Langley Research Center (LRC) has been computing power spectra of simulated atmospheric turbulence data by various techniques, in preparation for the B-57 gust velocity data analysis program. The results of these studies have confirmed earlier suspicions that conventional first-difference pre-whitening of gust velocity data can produce serious distortions in the spectral densities at very low frequencies (below the frequency of the gust velocity spectral "knee"). The results also indicate that the frequency averaging procedures have certain merits over ensemble averaging procedures in the computation of spectra by direct Fourier transform operations. Finally, the results do not reveal any significant difference in the spectral estimates obtained using Hann versus Parzen smoothing procedures.