Welcome to ARISTOTEL
ARISTOTEL is the acronym for the EU project 'Aircraft and Rotorcraft Pilot Couplings – Tools and Techniques for Alleviation and Detection'. It is a collaborative project with 10 partners from all over Europe and a duration of 3 years starting from October 1, 2010 and is funded under the European Community’s 7th Framework Programme (N° 266073). September 2013 marked the end of this successful project.
ARISTOTEL has the ambitious goal to advance the understanding, prediction and alleviation of a particularly unfavourable category of phenomena, the so-called 'aircraft-pilot-couplings and rotorcraft-pilot-couplings (A/RPCs)'. In the past usually known under the name of Pilot Induced/Pilot Assisted Oscillations (PIO/PAO), A/RPCs generally are oscillations or divergent responses of vehicle originating from adverse pilot-vehicle couplings. These undesirable couplings may result in potential instabilities or annoying limit cycle oscillations, degrading the aircraft handling qualities and risking exceedence of its structural strength envelope. The exceedence of structural strength limits can clearly result in catastrophic failures. Despite decades of work to develop methods for their prevention, unfavourable aircraft pilot couplings and rotorcraft pilot couplings continue to occur. The ARISTOTEL project aims to develop tools and techniques to advance the state-of-the-art in A/RPCs research and thus reduce the risk of accidents caused by these unfavourable phenomena. The ARISTOTEL consortium is very pleased to announce that all targets set forth for the project were met within the project's lifetime. Design and simulation guidelines for A/RPCs were developed.