Implementation of a comprehensive real-time simulation model of a tilt-rotor aircraft

The purpose of this work is the description of the implementation of a real-time flight simulation model of the Bell Aircraft Corporation XV-15 Tilt-Rotor Research Aircraft. The model is developed in the Matlab/Simulink environment and integrated with the ReDSim of the ZAV Centre for Aviation at ZHAW, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, in Winterthur, Switzerland, a research and development flight simulator employed for both educational and industrial applications. All the activities described were carried out by the author as part of her Exchange Project at ZHAW, from October 2019 to February 2020. The first part of the author's work has been focused mainly on reviewing and debugging the XV-15 rotor model, in terms of both its mathematical formulation and its implementation in the Simulink environment. Several addition have then been made to the rotor model, whith the aim of improving its accuracy while at the same time complying with the requirements for a real-time simulation. Most notably, the formulation of the flapping dynamics has been modified specifically to describe the behaviour of a gimballed rotor. As a result of the debugging and optimization activities carried out by the author, it has been possible to trim the flight simulation model using an algorithm based on the Newton-Rapson method. An extensive phase of model validation has followed. The simulation results have been compared to the data presented in the NASA Report CR-166537, "Development and validation of a simulation for a generic tilt-rotor aircraft", by Samuel W. Ferguson, 1989. Moreover, a series of pilot-in-the-loop tests has been conducted to asses the performance and handling qualities of the simulated aircraft, again comparing the results with experimental data.