Distributed Multi-Vehicle Simulation Including High-Order Airwake Representation

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 order to achieve real-time throughput speeds required in manned simulation, or may simply result from lack of data or sufficient analytical tools in the models themselves. A novel fully-coupled aerodynamic simulation that includes multiple aircraft simultaneously operating from a ship has been prototyped, and represents time-accurate couplings between aircraft wakes, ship superstructure, and ship airwake emanating from a moving platform. Various modeling simplifications for far wake decay and dissipation have been applied to this simulation and their effects evaluated in order to quantify the level of detail necessary to use this software as a DI testing predictive tool. Additional extensions to the model included the capability for full airframe wake modeling and an enhanced treatment of ship airwake effects. Favorable comparisons with a variety of datasets, and several simulation integration exercises, show the prototype model to be sufficiently general and robust to assure successful continued development to support a wide range of simulation applications.