Automated Tools for Updating Complex Simulations
Wider operational envelopes, complex nonlinear aerodynamics for novel aircraft configurations and designs, and safety concerns during the early stages of aircraft development have underscored the requirement for modeling and simulation prior to and during a flight test program. Although computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnel data provide a reasonable starting point for these simulations, efficient methods to improve simulation fidelity based on the analysis of flight data are needed. Barron Associates is leveraging existing system modeling and parameter identification techniques to streamline simulation development during new aircraft programs and efficiently maintain simulations for envelope expansion and configuration changes during aircraft derivative programs.
The end-product of the research is an integrated MATLAB analysis environment that – through automation of low-level tasks and not the high-level decisions – will enable designers to significantly improve the quality of their off-line simulations, reduce the cost of simulation maintenance, and retain flexibility/control of how the simulation updates are performed. A modular software architecture is emphasized to permit the software components to be used on a variety of applications ranging from aerodynamics and aircraft propulsion to non-aerospace modeling and simulation efforts. Stand-alone toolboxes for modeling and maximum-likelihood output-error identification have already been developed and released for beta testing.