A Remarkable Recovery and Successful Flight Tests of the P-FLEX Demonstrator

In just over 7 months, following the incident involving the T-FLEX demonstrator in August, 2022, the FLiPASED project-team (i.e., engineers and technicians from SZTAKI, Technical University of Munich, German Aerospace Center (DLR), ONERA - The French Aerospace Lab) has made a remarkable effort to redesign and rebuild the aircraft, carry out static and ground vibration tests, and ultimately conduct flight tests.

The R&D efforts of the SZTAKI team in the mentioned European project are closely related to their ARNL activities in the field of autonomous aerial vehicles.

This outstanding achievement was made possible by a group of highly skilled and dedicated experts who never gave up. They successfully flew the new P-FLEX demonstrator with flutter-prone wings, and a flutter stopper in a safe configuration. During their second flight, they achieved a flight time of 40 minutes, testing not only the autopilot, but also conducting flexible mode signal injection tests! 

We congratulate to the international team.