Flight Simulator to Investigate the Impact of Different Types of Actuators on the Piloting

Abstract

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.With the advancement of techniques for designing manned and unmanned aircraft, testing systems and dynamics in a previous phase became necessary. These tests are done through simulations with movement on or without a Stewart platform. The tests aim to determine the in-flight behavior of the systems and dynamics of the designed aircraft. Aiming at this type of test, this research aims to design a flight simulator with a flight envelope safe enough for actuator testing. The data used for the aircraft dynamics are from the F-16 Block 50. The tested actuator models are from the A7-D, DC-8, and F-16 aircraft. For the development of the flight envelope, a Stability Augmentation System (SAS) was designed using root locus, seeking optimization in various sets of speed and altitude. This scaled gain technique makes the aircraft controllable by one pilot throughout the defined flight envelope. Ultimately, a stable and reliable simulation environment was obtained for testing different actuators. The next step in this research is embedding the software on the robotic simulation platform SIVOR for pilot tests.

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