Extending Simulink with Blocks Managing Complex Objects Collaboratively - Application to Air-to-Air Refueling Simulation

Abstract

The present paper describes a Simulink extension that allows creating, managing, and exploiting complex object-oriented structures by adding several s-function blocks to the model and by configuring them. The paper describes first the simulation mechanism in a generic way and then shows a concrete application. This application originates from the authors' research on automation of air-to-air refueling maneuvers and has motivated this development. In this application, the developed Simulink extension is used to manage reference frames, perform kinematic computations, modeling complex wind fields, and perform low-order aerodynamics computations based on these modeled wind fields. From a Simulink user/modeler perspective, the whole add-on consists of a series of Simulink blocks with masks to configure them, that can be placed at the most convenient locations in the block diagram and permit to develop and use advanced features within a few minutes, which would otherwise have required a much larger modeling effort and that would have been error-prone.