A Demonstration Hybrid Computer for Real-Time Flight Simulation

摘要

A hybrid, real-time simulation facility has been designed, constructed, and demonstrated, using as a test vehicle the complete aerodynamic and engine equations for a highperformance military aircraft. The analog-digital configuration employs peripheral analog equipment to represent a linear, skeleton version of the aircraft and the PDP-1 digital computer to carry out engine simulation, decision management, and corrections for nonlinear effects. To provide an all-digital reference against which the hybrid simulation could be compared, the aircraft model, which in general scope is identical to the F-100A model used in the UDOFT studies, was also simulated on the PDP-1 alone. It was found that the solution rate of 20 per second employed in the all-digital study could be reduced to one per second without deleterious effects when the hybrid configuration was used. Such a reduction demonstrates that supplementing a digital computer by relatively inexpensive analog peripheral equipment in the manner suggested substantially increases the real-time capacity of the digital computer in complex simulation applications. Moreover, because a number of key variables are computed continuously in the analog domain, the introduction of analog equipment results in a net decrease in the complexity of the interface, particularly in the number of analog storage devices required. (Author)