FLIGHT MECHANICS SIMULATOR FOR ROTORCRAFT DEVELOPMENT

This paper describes the design and manufacturing of the AgustaWestland flight mechanics simulator for rotorcraft design. The aims of the simulator are the design of the handling qualities of any new rotorcraft, the simulation of flight manoeuvres, including those following engine failures and tail rotor loss, the instruments panel lay-out optimisation, etc.. The simulator has no motion capability and it is equipped with a pilot seat plus one assistant seat with no command lines. The pilot’s flight controls have four Moog motors for control loading of the feedback force. The simulator is driven by a home code named SIMENV that interfaces all the off the shelf software packages running in the simulation of rotorcraft flight (MATLAB®, VEGA®, VAPS®, Flightlab®). The out of the window display is provided by three video projectors on an emi-cylindrical screen with 6m of diameter. Two more LCD monitors, placed near the pilot’s feet, give the ground view, so that the feeling of being onboard is increased and take-off and landing manoeuvres can be simulated. A cluster of 13 PCs give the computational power for real time simulation and visual generation. The simulator described in the paper is now operational and currently used to improve the factory design chain efficiency. This paper presents also some diagrams explaining the activity of simulation performed to validate this design tool. Results obtained are good and the simulator ongoing work plays an important role in the conceptual phase of AgustaWestland helicopter design process. By this, not only engineers but also the pilot can now be involved in the helicopter design from the initial phase of the activity process.