Developing models for future real-time platforms: Virtual simulation and design of new components and systems for aircraft and remotely piloted aircraft systems

In the development of electrified and other vehicle systems, the modelling and simulation of the vehicle is very important. With these tools the preliminary design, as well as later detailed studies of the systems developed, allow engineers to spend less time on each phase of their projects or address them with an integrated approach. In addition, this integrated approach provides the possibility of building hardware-in-the loop models with all the components required. This vehicle modelling and simulation has gained more interest with the increasing use of a wide variety of RPAS, ranging from light weight micro aircraft to large vehicles of various tons. For this reason, the previously-described building tools are the final objective of the developing models to be used in real-time platform projects. The first step presented in this paper is to build a simulator that reproduces the behaviour of a selected aircraft and validate it. This paper presents the study of the performances and behaviour of an OPV used to validate the simulator developed later. At the end, some preliminary tests and estimations of the performances for the selected OPV with an electric motor are presented