An overview of a flight simulation system is presented with a discussion of the system components and the interaction between functional units. The functions of each unit in the visual system are described. Specifically, the projectile subsystem portion of the visual system is presented in detail. A projectile subsystem executive structure is presented with capability of controlling projectile activation and deletion. Mathematical models for missiles with linear projected impact and proportional guidance are discussed. Ballistic projectile models with and without wind and drag considerations are developed. The mathematical equations for position and attitude calculations are given. Design considerations and implementation of algorithms are also presented with other system design trade-offs.

No description available.

The College of Engineering at the University of Central Florida has a flight simulator. This simulator was built as a stand-alone Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) training aid. The college has attempted on several occasions to augment this simulator system with a visual (out the cockpit view) simulation for the trainee pilot. Funding and resources have restricted or limited these enhancements to non real-time simulation. This project/thesis provides the university with part of the solution to accurate real time simulation. The simulated aircraft position and direction is acquired at 9 to 40 Hertz with 10-bit resolution. This data is made available in the ubiquitous RS-232C standard format. Thus any size computer can utilize the position and direction information for the simulated aircraft. With this element completed, a future project can utilize this information for time and motion studies or visual simulation.

An ion scattering surface analysis system using TOF energy-analysis of the scattered ions was improved with a duoplasmatron ion source and new data-handling electronics. The new source gave greater beam current and stability. The new electronics were: a timing filter amplifier and constant fraction discriminator. Much work was done on alignment of the sample in the beam and reduction of the spot size. To add to the flexibility of the beam guidance system a new pair of steering plates was added. Some of the test spectra are presented to show the operation of the system. Relevant material on various aspects of the system are presented in the appendices. / None / Master of Engineering (ME)

Artificial flight on millimeter size scales has been a major challenge due to the difficulty in making a feasible flight mechanism in terms of fabrication, thrust and power used. Many have tried to copy animal flight but there has been little success at such sizes. One proposed solution is to make small thrusters out of resonant curved cantilevers which act as wings that follow a simple 1 degree-of-freedom motion. Such wings are free of joint friction, can be planarly fabricated using well documented techniques, can be predictably scaled to different sizes, and have been shown to generate a net thrust. In this thesis, the work investigates the nature of the wings’ thrust through thorough studies of computational fluid dynamic simulations to understand how they interact with the surrounding fluid and how exactly the forces are generated. Specifically, it considers the role of unsteady lagged fluid waves generated by the wings and explains how the wing-fluid interactions relate to drag coefficients at low to high flapping amplitudes and Reynolds numbers ranging from 100 - 100 000. It then studies the effect of different wing aspect ratios on the net force and power efficiencies. The results are then extended to a general dependence on the wings’ aspect ratio which allows for this parameter to be used in optimizing the wings’ net force/power used. Test wings are then made using an updated fabrication method and Molybdenum as the curve-inducing material in an attempt to produce more environmentally-stable wings with important successes, failures and improvements discussed. Results show that such Molybdenum-based wings are practical for flight, and that resonant curved cantilevers wings can be made more feasible by simple changes to their shape. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

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A number of challenges in the development and application of flying qualities criteria for modern aircraft are addressed in this dissertation. The history of flying qualities is traced from its origins to modern day techniques as applied to piloted aircraft. Included in this historical review is the case that was made for the development of flying qualities criteria in the 1940's and 1950's when piloted aircraft became prevalent in the United States military. It is then argued that UAVs today are in the same context historically as piloted aircraft when flying qualities criteria were first developed. To aid in development of a flying qualities criterion for UAVs, a relevant classification system for UAVs. Two longitudinal flying qualities criteria are developed for application to autonomous UAVs. These criteria center on mission performance of the integrated aircraft and sensor system. The first criterion is based on a sensor platform's ability to reject aircraft disturbances in pitch attitude. The second criterion makes use of energy methods to create a metric to quantify the transmission of turbulence to the sensor platform. These criteria are evaluated with airframe models of different classes of air vehicles using the CASTLE 6 DOF simulation. Another topic in flying qualities is the evaluation of nonlinear control systems in piloted aircraft. A L1 adaptive controller was implemented and tested in a motion based, piloted flight simulator. This is the first time that the L1 controller has been evaluated for piloted handling qualities. Results showed that the adaptive controller was able to recover good flying qualities from a degraded aircraft. The final topic addresses a less direct, but extremely important challenge for flying qualities research and education: a capstone course in flight mechanics teaching flight test techniques and featuring a motion based flight simulator was implemented and evaluated. The course used a mixture of problem based learning and role based learning to create an environment where students could explore key flight mechanics concepts. Evaluation of the course's effectiveness to promote the understanding of key flight mechanics concepts is presented. / Ph. D.

The unsteady vortex-lattice method is used to calculate the pressure coefficients on thick and thin airfoils in steady and unsteady flowfields. The parameters which affect the results, such as time step and aspect ratio, are studied. The effects of Reynolds number and thickness of a wing in steady state and in oscillation are investigated. The present computed results for thick and thin wings are in close agreement with the experimental data. The numerical results obtained from a lifting-surface approximation are also in close agreement with the experimental data for a wing as thick as 18%. The lift and moment coefficients are affected by the thickness of a wing in oscillation and this effect is more noticeable for the moment coefficient. But to illustrate this it is necessary to go as high as 27% thickness. A wing in steady flight near a wavy surface, such as in the case of a large transoceanic wingship, is simulated by a wing oscillating in heave near a flat surface. In accord with the wingship, small aspect ratios and slight camber are considered. The numerical simulation predicts that the mean aerodynamic loads on a wing executing a simple-harmonic heaving motion are higher than the corresponding loads on the same wing in steady flight at the mean height and the same angle of attack. The increases are about the same for all heights. Hence, these preliminary results suggest that it would be beneficial to fly near the waves; that doing so would improve the aerodynamic efficiency. Also included in the present results are numerical simulation of the wakes that show the strong influences of the ground and the oscillations on their behavior. The unsteady vortex-lattice method is further used to investigate the effect of trailing vortices from a large leading wing on a trailing aircraft. The aerodynamic response of the trailing aircraft is examined by calculating the lift and drag forces and the pitch and roll moments. Furthermore, the aerodynamic response and the behavior of the wakes of the crossing wings are investigated. / Ph. D.

To improve the recoverability and survivability of aircraft after damage, a better understanding of the flight dynamics and the structural loads is needed. However, damage can introduce asymmetries that complicate the modeling. An extended vortex lattice code is used to model the quasi-steady aerodynamic forces. The vortex lattice method provides the force distribution which is not available elsewhere. Snapshots from the vortex lattice model are used to generate a reduced order model (ROM). This ROM contains non-linear terms to account for non-linearities that the damage can introduce. The ROM is coupled with equations of motion which are able to account for instantaneous shifts in the center of gravity caused by the damage. This methodology is applied to the generic transport model (GTM) with the loss of a portion of the port wing tip. This model is used to examine the effects of the damage on the aircraft's trim and the stability of that trim. This model is also used to calculate the aerodynamic, inertial, and propulsive loads on the wing as the aircraft is maneuvering. / Master of Science

Traditional flight control design is based on linearization of the equations of motion around a set of trim points and scheduling gains of linear (optimal) controllers around each of these points to meet performance specifications. For high angle of attack maneuvers and other aggressive flight regimes (required for fighter aircraft for example), the dynamic nonlinearities are dependent not only on the states of the system, but also on the control inputs. Hence, the conventional linearization-based logic cannot be straightforwardly extended to these flight regimes, and non-conventional approaches are required to extend the flight envelope beyond the one achievable by gain-scheduled controllers. Due to the nonlinear-in-control nature of the dynamical system in aggressive flight maneuvers, well-known dynamic inversion methods cannot be applied to determine the explicit form of the control law. Additionally, the aerodynamic uncertainties, typical for such regimes, are poorly modelled, and therefore there is a great need for adaptive control methods to compensate for dynamic instabilities. In this thesis, we present an adaptive control design method for both short-period and lateral/directional control of a fighter aircraft. The approach uses a specialized set of radial basis function approximators and Lyapunov-based adaptive laws to estimate the unknown nonlinearities. The adaptive controller is defined as a solution of fast dynamics, which verifies the assumptions of Tikhonov's theorem from singular perturbations theory. Simulations illustrate the theoretical findings. / Master of Science