Virtual Flight Testing with VIRTTAC-Castor: New Capabilities and Flight Envelope Definition

Kurzfassung

This paper presents the newest release (v0.52-beta) of the VIRTTAC-Castor flight dynamical simulation model. VIRTTAC-Castor is the first model of a larger family, VIRTTAC (Virtual Test Aircraft), developed at the DLR Institute of Flight Systems and freely available on GitHub. These models are black boxes in order to put the users in the situation of a flight test engineer who does not have access to the model equations or parameters but can only test the complete aircraft system as a whole. The VIRTTAC-Castor configuration is a 100-passenger twin-engine high-wing T-tail transport aircraft. The novelties introduced with this new version include the first versions of two fault/abnormal scenarios: a wing icing case and actuator jamming for one or more primary control surfaces (elevators, ailerons, or rudder). In addition to introducing these new features, the paper also provides new information regarding the operational flight envelope (e.g. service ceiling, VMO, MMO, VFE for each configuration).