An Integrated, Modular Simulation System for Education ... - Cal Poly

Existing Simulation ToolsThere are two main types of simulation of fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft:batch and real time. Both can be further divided into categories that include variouscombinations of simulated and actual hardware in the loop, and piloted, and preprogrammed automatic paper pilot inputs [Ref. 29, 30, 31.]Batch simulation requires one or more computers and can include simulated oractual hardware. Real time simulation requires one or more computers, actual orsimulated hardware. Piloted simulation also requires an inceptor device (possibly withfeedback), graphical or mechanical instrumentation, and one or more graphical displays.To simulate an aircraft one must start with a basic set of equations of motion forthe aircraft and add complexity to simulate more complex behavior or include simulatedor actual systems into the basic system. The basic equations of motion for fixed wingaircraft assume a rigid body. Actual aircraft are not rigid and most aircraft also containvarious complex systems that could be modeled.Simulation of a flying vehicle can be done at a variety of levels of complexityfrom treating the aircraft as a set of simple transfer functions, to a complex and coupledstate space system, to a basic nonlinear 6 degree of freedom (6 DOF) rigid body to acomplex modeling of all the known components involved [Ref. 32]. With the computingpower available with a single Pentium processor models up to a basic 6 DOF rigid bodycan be included in a real-time pilot in the loop simulation. Batch simulations of anycomplexity can be performed with the corresponding increase in processing time for theadditional complexity.22