A High-fidelity Approach for Flight Dynamics Simulations and MDA towards Virtual Flight Testing

Abstract

The development, testing and production of new aircraft are associated with considerable temporal and financial risks due to the product and manufacturing complexity. In order to accelerate the introduction of innovative technologies for more economical, more environmentally friendly and safer air vehicles and to better control the technological risks involved, DLR’s guiding concept "The Virtual Product" aims at virtualizing the design, development and manufacturing processes, including the definition of an appropriate validation strategy. The availability of high fidelity simulation tools with the capability to model multidisciplinary phenomena is a decisive part in that context. High demands are put on the numerical methods and solvers as the tools must provide reliable results in a robust manner for the entire flight envelope where nonlinearities are prominent in most of the disciplines. A key technology is the ability to enable Virtual Flight Testing based on high-fidelity simulation tools. This publication outlines the methods, the framework, and the simulation models for particular applications, the virtual system identification flights of a medium size jet transport. Aerodynamics, structural dynamics, flight mechanics and propulsion are considered for the massively-parallel, time-domain simulations.