There are many 6 degree of freedom aircraft flight simulations. If you are new to a given simulation package, you are left with the challenge of understanding how to use it correctly. Further, when simulation results are obtained, one is often forced to trust the simulation without knowledge of code verification. In this series, we create a flight simulation from the ground up, that is a new clean sheet design. This will allow us to understand the "nuts and bolts" of the simulation in detail with careful and systematic verification.
The textbook for this series is Stevens, Lewis, and Johnson, "Aircraft Control and Simulation: Dynamics, Controls Design, and Autonomous Systems, 3rd Edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. The simulation will be coded in Python.
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Learn the basic structure of an aircraft flight simulation, some potential uses, components, and important considerations when developing a new simulation.
Learn the aircraft six degree of freedom equations of motion and how to code them in Python.
Learn how aircraft attitude is capture with Euler angles and modeled with the Euler kinematic equations.
Learn how to model aircraft position, aerodynamic forces, and the atmosphere. Initial verification is performed by dropping spheres from high altitude.
Learn how to verify your simulation with NASA 6-DOF check cases, how to model aerodyanmic damping, and the route to visualize your simulation results in FlightGear.
Learn about relevant systems to for a full X-15 flight dynamic model including: mission, outer mold line, control surfaces, reaction control system, propulsion, air data systems, inertial flight data system (navigation system), stability augmentation system, and the MH-96 adaptive control system.
Learn how the X-15 augmented its stability in the roll, pitch, and yaw axes with a basic proportional feedback control system on angular rates.
Learn a general process of creating an aerodynamic model for an aircraft from plots in the open literature, how to integrate the model in simulation, and how to validate the model against flight test data.