Special Session 14

General Aviation is often called “plankton of aviation” and, like the true ocean plankton, it has its fundamental importance for the sustainable development of aerospace science and technology. Therefore, the third edition of the GARFIELD Special Session will be devoted to metrology, methods, and instrumentation for testing and evaluating General Aviation aircrafts, including light sport aircrafts, rotorcrafts, homebulits and their subsystems. This will include aircraft performance measurements, flight and ground testing technology, validation of new aircraft concepts, etc. Contributions that address metrological issues in the field of electric propulsion, including the concept of distributed propulsion, light composite structures, disruptive technologies for multicopters and roadable aircrafts are welcome in the GARFIELD Special Session.

A special attention will be paid to airfield performance on grassy runways. Airfields with grassy runways are still popular, especially in General Aviation. Grassy runways are very sensitive to atmospheric conditions and their critical parameters may change very rapidly. One of the most challenging problems is the lack of evaluation methods for grass surfaces and an accompanying information system to help pilots perform safe landings and takeoffs on the grass.

Jaroslaw Pytka is a professor of mechanical engineering at the Lublin University of Technology in Lublin, Poland. His research interests include flight and ground testing, measurements of non-electrical, physical quantities, terramechanics especially with respect to airfield performance of light airplanes on unsurfaced (grassy, snow-covered) runways. He is a member of the AIAA, SAE, AOPA, and EAA.