Modeling and simulating aircraft stability and control—The SimSAC project

This paper overviews the SimSAC Project, Simulating Aircraft Stability And Control Characteristics for Use in Conceptual Design. It reports on the three major tasks: development of design software, validating the software on benchmark tests and applying the software to design exercises. CEASIOM, the Computerized Environment for Aircraft Synthesis and Integrated Optimization Methods, is a framework tool that integrates discipline-specific tools for conceptual design. At this early stage of the design it is very useful to be able to predict the flying and handling qualities of this design. In order to do this, the aerodynamic database needs to be computed for the configuration being studied, which then has to be coupled to the stability and control tools to carry out the analysis. The benchmarks for validation are the F12 windtunnel model of a generic long-range airliner and the TCR windtunnel model of a sonic-cruise passenger transport concept. The design, simulate and evaluate (DSE) exercise demonstrates how the software works as a design tool. The exercise begins with a design specification and uses conventional design methods to prescribe a baseline configuration. Then CEASIOM improves upon this baseline by analyzing its flying and handling qualities. Six such exercises are presented.