Development of Multi-Purpose Reconfigurable Engineering Flight Simulator at Ryerson University

Abstract

Flight simulators can recreate aircraft flights for flight training and aircraft design. This paper reviews existing engineering flight simulators and introduces the development of a multi-purpose reconfigurable engineering flight simulator at Ryerson University. The multi-purpose engineering flight simulator named the Ryerson Fixed Base Simulator (RFBS) has been designed and built to teach and initiate research projects in the area of aircraft design, flight simulation, pilot training, and flight data analysis. It consists of three 46 inch high definition screens and six 22 inch touch screen panels to represent the instrument panel, the centre console, and the overhead panels of an actual aircraft cockpit. Several low-cost, commercial flight simulation software have been tested and X-Plane was selected as the main flight simulation tool. The CAE Flightscape InsightTM, a world-class commercial tool used in the safety of flight sciences and flight data analysis is also installed in the RFBS to perform aircraft flight data analysis, animation and reporting, flight operations economic analysis, and flight training data analysis. This paper introduces two research projects that utilizes the RFBS. Development of a data conversion program to enhance the flight data generation and analysis procedures and development of a reconfigurable UAV control station to validate the reconfigurability of the RFBS.