An aircraft aeroelasticity measurement system according to the invention
can be used to perform in-flight wing twist measurements of an aircraft
or any moving vehicle or structure on which its sensors can be mounted.
The system includes a centralized processing unit, a reference navigation
unit mounted in the aircraft body, a plurality of measurement navigation
units mounted in the aircraft wings, and a global positioning system
("GPS") receiver that generates GPS data for enhancing the accuracy of
the navigation data. The system collects navigation data from the
reference navigation unit and the measurement navigation units, generates
navigation solutions from the navigation data, and performs a stochastic
alignment and flexure estimation procedure to generate a corrected
measurement solution that indicates the aeroelasticity of the aircraft.
Wing twist and wing deflection information can be derived from the
corrected measurement solution.