Validation Of A General Purpose Airborne Simulator For Simulation Of Large Transport Aircraft Handling Qualities PDF Download

In the validation of the general purpose airborne simulator, certain motion and visual cues could not be duplicated because the airborne simulator could not be independently controlled in six degrees of freedom. According to pilot opinion (NASA TN D-6431), however, the XB-70 airplane at two flight conditions had been simulated satisfactorily. Because of the dependence of simulation results on simulator configuration, two areas were investigated after the validation program was completed. The first was the effect of mismatched cues on observed handling qualities. Experiments which varied lateral acceleration at the pilot's location and yaw rate, while keeping constant the lateral-directional dynamics displayed on the pilot's instruments, showed pilot sensitivity to directional motion cues to be different for the simulation of two XB-70 flight conditions. A technique for allowing consecutive evaluations of moving- and fixed-base configurations in flight was used successfully to determine motion cue effects. The second area investigated was the measurement and description of simulation fidelity. In-flight frequency-response measurements of the model-following system were taken to examine model-following fidelity for directly matched variables such as sideslip and roll rate as well as uncontrolled parameters such as lateral acceleration.