Specification of operational flight profiles and dynamics:

Commercial-off-the-shelf flight simulators are now reconfigurable through user interface software and have a significant increase in the number of parameterised aerodynamic co-efficients available to model the fidelity of flight performance. This leads to more stringent requirements concerning the management and interpretation of flight performance data which in turn means that certification of safety critical functionality of advanced avionics, inclusive of flight simulators for training purposes, is increasingly more complex to manage. A structured approach to management and traceability of aerodynamic data is required, along with quantitative measures of simulation fidelity which can relate flight test data, simulation model detail and sensitivity analyses of avionics functional performance. The principles of the approach presented in this paper are well known in aerodynamics literature and apply to all classically designed aircraft. However the consistent and structured application of these principles in flight simulator standards has not been well presented and needs to be re-addressed with the advent and ready availability of the user reconfigurable flight simulator. The approach presented brings advantages of greater management visibility to simulation needs, and the potential for a controlled hierarchy of inter-related suite of models relevant to the life support of one aircraft type. Practical application of this approach has allowed for a more a straight-forward definition of flight dynamic requirements and a check on completeness and consistency of those requirements. It has allowed a means by which generalist software engineers can quickly come to terms with the essence of flight dynamics and its simulation for practical applications in the support and safety of aircraft operations.