Overview of the Subscale RAVEN Flight Controls and Modeling Testbed

The Research Aircraft for eVTOL Enabling TechNologies (RAVEN) Subscale Wind-Tunnel and Flight Test (SWFT) model is a subscale aircraft built for flight dynamics and controls research demonstrated in wind-tunnel and flight-test experiments. The intent of this paper is to provide a summary of past, current, and future efforts being pursued by the RAVEN-SWFT project. Initially, vehicle development guidelines were crafted by a multidisciplinary team to ensure that the RAVEN-SWFT vehicle was well suited for research in multiple areas, including aero-propulsive modeling, flight controls, and autonomy, among others. The vehicle has been used to obtain extensive wind-tunnel data, enabling aero-propulsive model development across the transition flight envelope and validation of computational tools. The vehicle will be used to conduct flight testing in order to evaluate modeling strategies and flight control logic. The RAVEN-SWFT model also serves as a risk reduction activity for a conceptual, full-scale vehicle in the 1000-lb class. The next steps in the project are to successfully demonstrate free flight in hover, transition, forward flight, and the reverse thereof, utilizing custom control laws integrated onto the RAVEN-SWFT avionics hardware. The project intends to publicize all of the geometry, data, and methods in future reports.