Rotorcraft flight simulation to support aircraft certification: a review of the state of the art with an eye to future applications

Abstract

This paper presents the approach for Rotorcraft Certification by Simulation proposed within the RoCS project. In particular, the aspects of model validation and credibility assessment through the usage of uncertainty quantification techniques are reviewed, and some lesson learned are presented. It is shown that the increase of effort required to thoroughly evaluate the capability of the simulation model is often counterbalanced by the advantages of the insight that can be obtained and possibly exploited also for design purposes. It is shown that the numerical approaches, and in some cases even the tools required to perform the necessary uncertainty analyses are publicly available and can be directly employed. This paper is one of a set presented at the 49th European Rotorcraft Forum discussing results from the EU Clean Sky 2 project, Rotorcraft Certification by Simulation (RoCS).