Flight Test Mission Reassignment for Civil Aircraft Based on Flexible Job Shop Problem

Civil aircraft represent intricate technical systems, and their flight test is a system engineering process. This process is essential for verifying their compliance with airworthiness regulations and operational requirements. In this process, planning flight test missions is a type of combinatorial optimization problem. The solution gives an optimal allocation plan adhering to operational constraints. Assigning flight test missions for civil aircraft involves numerous uncertainties and very often, requires unforeseen adjustments. The original missions need to be reassigned due to these adjustments in a scientific way. In this paper, considering the scenarios that emerged during real civil aircraft flight tests, a multi-objective flight test mission planning model is established based on the Flexible Job Shop Problem (FJSP) model. The model is specifically tailored to the flight text mission reassignment. Examples of flight test scenarios that require mission reassignments are addressed using the FJSP model proposed in this paper and optimized using the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm. Two rounds of initial population updates were conducted to obtain overall extreme values. The results verify the feasibility of obtaining a viable solution for the flight test mission assignment problem under complex constraints derived from real engineering requirements. These solutions can be used to address similar types of engineering problems.