Date of Award

Spring 2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

Program/Concentration

Aerospace Engineering

Committee Director

Brett Newman

Committee Member

Colin Britcher

Committee Member

Drew Landman

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E56 M537 2014

Abstract

This thesis presents and explains the methodology used to design and construct an aircraft dynamics simulation workstation. Beginning from an outdated Navy T-34 training simulator, a gift to the school by the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory via a previous student, a new system was created to allow an engineer and/or pilot to manually control and evaluate vehicle characteristics for the purposes of research, development, and testing. Retaining only the superstructure of the original T-34 trainer, the entire system was re-engineered to provide a functional, immersive, and expandable simulation environment, complete with a five-screen visual system covering 97.5 deg of horizontal periphery and 49.3 deg of elevation. The computer architecture was also updated to a single Mac Pro computer running a trio of software consisting of FlightGear to provide the visual display, MATLAB for dynamics processing, and LabVIEW to collect and disseminate user inputs, and to display data pertinent to the simulation. Development of the simulator was performed using a fully non-linear numerical model of a Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon coded using technical data available in the open literature. The design and construction was successfully concluded by providing a functional vehicle dynamics simulation workstation having the ability to create an environment in which an engineer can plug in a dynamics model and have a pilot fly/test the model with full visual feedback. This thesis provides a description of the existing system, details the design and construction of the re-engineered and expanded simulator, and presents suggestions for future improvements and applications for the simulator.

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DOI

10.25777/eezw-b377

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