Trajectory Scripts for Aircraft and Spacecraft Flight Path Analysis

摘要

This paper describes a control scheme used to quickly define a complicated trajectory for analysis of aircraft and spacecraft operations for which closed-form equations are not suitable. A "Trajectory Script" is a sequence of event-driven flight control commands that define a trajectory and "fly" the vehicle during simulation. A Trajectory Script can be developed in less than a minute, and can be changed and rerun in seconds. The method is implemented in the ROAST trajectory module of the RDS~(win) aircraft design software, but could be applied to any time-dependent trajectory analysis. The paper describes the creation and operation of Trajectory Scripts, and discusses specific coded algorithms essential to implementing the concept in a time-domain trajectory simulation program.