A Fully Coupled Multi-Aircraft DI Simulation Model

Attempts to simulate the dynamic interface (DI) environment of landing aircraft onto Navy ships typically incorporate extensive approximations in both the component aerodynamic models and their interaction. These lower fidelity models are employed in orderto achieve real-time throughput speeds required in manned simulation, or may simply result from lack of data orsufficient analytical tools in the models themselves. A novel fully-coupled aerodynamic simulation that includes multiple aircraft simultaneously operating from a ship is proposed for development, that will represent time-accurate couplings betweenaircraft wakes, ship superstructure, and ship airwake emanating from a moving platform. Various modeling simplifications will then be applied to this simulation and their effects evaluated in order to quantify the level of detail necessary to use thissoftware as a DI testing predictive tool. These simplifications should also enable the development of a networked version of this simulation environment that may ultimately achieve real-time throughput speeds through parallel computation. Extensive usewill be made of past and current efforts at CDI in real-time aircraft wake simulation, bluff-body aerodynamic analysis, and hybrid CFD approaches that all address the DI aerodynamic environment. The software end product resulting from Phase I/Phase II research would provide a tool for pre-test prediction of the operational environment anticipated for flight near maritime or ground structures subject to external disturbances and prevailing windeffects. These conditions include landing and launching aircraft from ships, operations from off-shore oil platforms, and use of heliports on top of and adjacent to large buildings. An additional benefit of the software would be an enhanced representationof flight operations in structure-generated turbulence to facilitate pilot training.