Interdisciplinary human-in-the-loop simulation framework for evaluation of actuation system concepts

Abstract

 This paper presents the initial work of an international collaboration with the aim of connecting distributed test rigs for evaluation of new flight control actuation system technologies. The involved partners are companies, universities, and institutions from Sweden and Brazil. Three test rigs with different capabilities and scopes are available through the partners involvement in the project, that includes an industrial robot-based flight simulator, a test rig for digital hydraulic actuators, and a full-scale Iron Bird for energy management and flight control actuation system testing. Connecting the test rigs facilitates a larger test scope and the evaluation of several technologies than using only one test rig. A model-based approach is adopted surrounding a virtual flight simulator used for model integration to allow testing both actuator performance and HMI aspects. The test case is a fictive fighter aircraft. The virtual flight simulator includes the aircraft behaviour, aerodynamics, propulsion, and flight control system. The virtual flight simulator is implemented in the physical one, and two flight missions are defined and flown by trained pilots. The generated data set is used by the actuator test rigs for performance evaluation. In the final part the actuator models are validated using the test data and integrated in the physical flight simulator for evaluating the impact of the actuator characteristics on aircraft performance and handling. The paper outlines the framework and method and illustrates the first part of the distributed testing by integrating pilot generated flight data for actuator performance evaluation and comparison.