DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF A LOCAL LINEARIZATION ALGORITHM FOR THE INTEGRATION OF QUATERNION RATE EQUATIONS IN REAL-TIME FLIGHT SIMULATION PROBLEMS

摘要

High angular rates encountered in real-time flight simulation problems may require a more stable and accurate integration method than the classical methods normally used. A study has been made to develop a general local linearization procedure of integrating dynamic system equations when using a digital computer in real time. The procedure is specifically applied to the integration of the quaternion rate equations. For this application, results are compared to a classical second-order method. The local linearization approach is shown to have desirable stability characteristics and gives significant improvement in accuracy over the classical second-order integration methods.