Propulsion System Modeling For A Multi-Aircraft Simulator

A procedure for high accuracy propulsion modeling in a multi-aircraft simulator environment is described. The procedure consists in obtaining engine characteristics from a small set of available data and processing them off-line to obtain different engine maps. Each aircraft engine, mainly turbofan or turboprop, is modeled with a different architecture to optimize computational load and level of accuracy at the same time. Very stringent requirements were applied in the validation process since the simulator was primarily meant to be used for the development of a novel Flight Management System. The verified BADA (Base of Aircraft Data) tool and the CMAPSS developed by NASA Glenn Research Center were used to obtain the engine characteristics in terms of engine pressure ratio (EPR), thrust and fuel consumption. Data obtained from flight tests and flight manuals were used as reference for the purpose of model validation.