January 4, 2022
We believe in model based development. For us, physical modeling is a key step to understand all important effects and internal design drivers of any complex system. Especially for novel aircraft configurations without existing learning curves, model based design is crucial for increasing development speed and reducing financial as well as safety risks. Keeping the simulation models as close as possible to physical reality is a challenge we at AVILUS face with a pragmatic approach. First of all, we only model the important effects for the system characteristics. Second of all, we use physical experiments to verify and identify our models. For electric power trains for example, we rely on truck tests presented in our last blog. Based on the obtained models, our inhouse generic and efficient aircraft simulation and analysis framework allows us to develop various aircraft systems at low cost and high speed.
We use the simulation models for aircraft design, aircraft performance and controllability assessment, flight control system design and pilot training in our simulator. Before a first flight test, we always test our implemented flight control algorithms in model in the loop (MIL) and hardware in the loop (HIL) simulations. Another advantage of model based development is the possibility of automating parts of the extensive tests required during the aircraft development phase. With this approach we can highly increase the safety and confidence for aircraft operation while keeping speed high and development costs low. As you can already see from the last paragraphs, model based development is a fundamental part of our every day live at AVILUS. This entry today only serves as quick top level introduction to our design philosophy at AVILUS. The next entries will give more detailed insights in specific challenges and innovative solutions we can offer at AVILUS.
