The Expanded Reach of Simulation Based Aircraft System Verification and its Software Capability Requirements

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The use of simulation in the development of aircraft and aircraft systems has become prevalent throughout the domain of the aircraft product development process. This paper will focus on the segment of simulation that includes real-time simulation, real-time test, and their surrounding technical areas. As the value, in terms of utility per dollar, and capability of commercial and open source tools has grown, and as the techniques associated with real-time simulation and real-time test have evolved, simulation based test, using real-time simulation systems, has grown without bound. Open source software and the standards that comprise the COTS computer hardware market have created a highly competitive technology marketplace that appears to have many years of Moores Law style increases in benefit to offer the aircraft product market. Rapid advances in aircraft technology and growth in the sophistication of this technology is requiring more sophisticated methods of developing, integrating, testing, and certifying systems be employed. Luckily, when done well, the investment in simulation based aircraft testing software, systems, and IT infrastructure has offered significant returns and has resulted in risk mitigation, reduced loss of life, less flight testing, and brings new technologies into the products much quicker than previous processes. The move to a “More Electric Aircraft” and the addition of a high-speed, Ethernet based networking backbone within the aircraft are keeping development, verification, and certification teams very busy. These technologies are opening the door to a path of safety, efficient, and comfort advancements for the foreseeable future. With a four trillion dollar plus twenty-year commercial aircraft market forecast, investments in these aircraft product advancements appear to be easily warranted. These technologies unavoidably add complexity and greater interoperability to the aircraft. This added complexity and connectivity requires that more advanced and efficient techniques be applied to the development, integration, verification, and certification of each system and all systems combined. Real-time, hardware-in-the-loop, pilot-in-the-loop simulation, and realtime open-loop testing have become the go-to approaches to help bring down to size an ever-increasingly challenging set of tasks. These methods are found in iron bird simulators, aviation integration labs, cockpit development and verification labs, and in the system verification departments at the typical aircraft subsystem supplier. This paper examines those open source software technologies and standards based electronics technologies that are leading the adoption battle in the world of simulation based test and explores the characteristics of the winner versus the losers. This is presented against a review of the software and hardware capability requirements and new technology that is making its way into the capability space. The aircraft industry is accumulating an incredibly valuable set of intangible “simulation assets” on their respective balance sheets. Over the past two decades there have been many lessons that have been learned regarding the dos and don’ts of this asset accumulation effort. This paper reviews and explores these lessons and how they’ve guided this technology’s evolution.