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

Drew Langman

Committee Member

Xiaoyu Zhang

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E56 R44 2014

Abstract

Simulation is a powerful tool for examining a dynamic system or process, but ensuring the model represents the real world sufficiently well for a given objective is difficult. This thesis will present and explain the methodology used to design a Human-In-The-Loop Engineering Aircraft Simulator. For aircraft simulation, numerical methods must be employed to perform the calculations required. The number of required calculations per second is computationally and resource expensive. Some existing aircraft simulations trade off mathematical accuracy of the model so available computing power can be used to run a human interface. Conversely, another simulator may have a very poor human interface but can produce extremely accurate data. One approach to a solution is to develop software with an architecture that can achieve a balance between a simulator that is both usable for a human and mathematically accurate. The infrastructure that makes up the software architecture can be grouped into three systems: aircraft motion propagation, cockpit scenery generation, and human inceptor excitation. At the conception of this thesis, hardware and software existed and implemented a design that was incapable of producing real-time simulation. The hardware that made up the cockpit was reused; however, improvements to the software were made. The previous system governing aircraft motion propagation used MatLab to handle numerical computations. Open source software called FlightGear was used to perform cockpit scenery generation. Lab View was used to perform the analog to digital conversion to read in the human control inceptors. The entire software architecture was reconstituted in the C programming language. The new software handles all the required numerical computations required for aircraft motion propagation and data input and output with the other systems. The improved architecture resulted in a simulator capable of producing mathematically accurate data in real-time with a human-in-the-loop.

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DOI

10.25777/9h3r-nz25

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