Gusts, discrete and indiscrete

Abstract

For the analysis of gust loads on aircraft, a method is described in which the occurrence and magnitude of the loads are represented as random variables. The paper begins with the discrete gust, and goes on to treat the case in which the disturbances are too frequent to be considered singly and become indiscrete. In the limit this leads to the usual results obtained from the spectral approach, but in the observational material examined this limit is not reached. The simple mathematical model developed here gives a consistent picture gf the properties of observed gust load frequency distributions.