EuroSim Applications - GRACE - Generic Research Aircraft Cockpit Environment

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GRACE - Generic Research Aircraft Cockpit Environment

Objective

The Generic Research Aircraft Cockpit Environment (GRACE) is the research flight simulator facility of the National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) in Amsterdam. The flexible software and reconfigurable hardware of GRACE make it adaptable to many research topics. GRACE can be used for the evaluation of aircraft handling qualities, new cockpit systems and displays, operational procedures and other topics that involve human factors in the cockpit. GRACE is very well suited for the evaluation of new aircraft technologies from their concept phase up to deployment in real aircraft.

Context

GRACE is a high fidelity full flight simulator with a cockpit that can be configured to represent different types of aircraft including the Boeing 747, the Airbus A340, A330 and A320, the Fokker 100 and the Cessna Citation II. This enables the simulation of a wide range of aircraft and the selection of an aircraft that fits the research topic.

GRACE can also be used to evaluate aircraft that only exist on the drawing board. The control columns and wheels in the cockpit can be replaced by two side sticks or even centre sticks all driven by an electrical control loading system. The throttles, the auto pilot and other control panels are available in Boeing and Airbus configurations.

All the software that is used to drive GRACE is developed in-house and is designed with flexibility in mind. This makes it very easy to integrate new functions or modules and connect to customer provided applications. GRACE has a number of avionics display suites available build with the Vincent tool. Vincent is the display and HMI prototype development and evaluation tool also developed by the NLR. Display suites available for GRACE include Boeing, Airbus and Fokker style displays.

Role of EuroSim

The GRACE simulator is a full flight simulator that needs to run in hard real-time mode to minimise the delay between pilot control inputs and simulator response. The hard real-time operation is also important for smooth and realistic aircraft movement and the representation of the environment in the out side visual. EuroSim enables the hard real-time operation of the aircraft simulation models and the flexible means to log all required parameters for each simulation time step.