On Standardized Model Integration: Automated Validation in Aircraft System Simulation

The financial and safety related risks associated with aircraft development and operation require well founded design and operational decisions. If those decisions are to be founded upon information provided by models and simulators, then the credibility of that information needs to be assessed and communicated. Today, the large number of sensors available in modern aircraft enable model validation and credibility assessment on a different scale than what has been possible up to this point. This thesis aims to identify and address challenges to allow for automated, independent, and objective methods of integrating sub-system models into simulators while assessing and conveying the constituent models aggregated credibility.

The results of the work include a proposed method for presenting the individual models’ aggregated credibility in a simulator. As the communicated credibility of simulators here relies on the credibility of each included model, the assembly procedure itself cannot introduce unknown discrepancies with respect to the System of Interest (SoI). Available methods for the accurate simulation of coupled models are therefore exploited and tailored to the applications of aircraft development under consideration. Finally, a framework for automated model validation is outlined, supporting on-line simulator credibility assessment according to the presented proposed method.