Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation of Aircraft Actuator

Abstract: Advanced computer simulations will play a more and more important role in future aircraft development and aeronautic research. Hardware-in-the-loop simulations enable examination of single components without the need of a full-scale model of the system. This project investigates the possibility of conducting hardware-in-the-loop simulations using a hydraulic test rig utilizing modern computer equipment. Controllers and models have been built in Simulink and Hopsan. Most hydraulic and mechanical components used in Hopsan have also been translated from Fortran to C and compiled into shared libraries (.dll). This provides an easy way of importing Hopsan models in LabVIEW, which is used to control the test rig. The results have been compared between Hopsan and LabVIEW, and no major differences in the results could be found. Importing Hopsan components to LabVIEW can potentially enable powerful features not available in Hopsan, such as hardware-in-the-loop simulations, multi-core processing and advanced plotting tools. It does however require fast computer systems to achieve real-time speed. The results of this project can provide interesting starting points in the development of the next generation of Hopsan.