Flight analysis and visualization capabilities intended to speed up the aerospace design process have been added to the latest versions of MathWorks’ Simulink and MATLAB software.
In Release 2018b, the Aerospace Blockset has been updated with flight control analysis tools to help analyze the flying qualities of aerospace vehicles. The Aerospace Toolbox now has the capability for users to customize the interfaces to feature cockpit flight instruments which help visualize and analyze the motion and behavior of aerospace vehicles.
According to MathWorks, the latest tools should help users develop continuous workflows from the early stages of vehicle design and development to flight prototyping, reducing time between design and testing.
Aerospace engineering and design teams often use Simulink and the DO Qualification Kit to ensure compliance with standards like MIL-F-8785C, DO-178 B and DO-178 C. The latest update means engineers working with in-house or third-party tools for flight visualization and analysis can now work directly within the Simulink environment to achieve these things.
Paul Barnard, MathWorks’ design automation marketing director said, “The ability to model, simulate, analyze, and visualize is critical to the highly regulated aerospace industry. That’s why Simulink has become the design environment of choice for these engineers.
“Now these teams can reduce design time even more, because they can iterate to reach prototyping in a few weeks instead of many months. This will help them meet development deadlines while ensuring high-fidelity and compliance with standards.”
The Aerospace Blockset is used to model, simulate, and analyze aerospace vehicle dynamics. The new flight control analysis tools include templates to get started and functions to compute and analyze flying qualities of airframes modeled in Simulink.
The Aerospace Toolbox provides tools and functions to help analyze and visualize aerospace vehicle motion using reference standards and models. The flight instruments added in R2018b display measurements using standard cockpit instruments.
