Design and analysis for a three-rotational-dof flight simulator of fighter-aircraft

Abstract

Most of researchers focused on traditional six degrees of freedom (DOF) Stewart flight simulator, which can not be adaptive in fighter-aircraft flight simulator. A three rotational DOF flight simulator of fighter-aircraft based on double parallel manipulator and hybrid structure is presented. The flight simulator is composed of two identical 3-RRS (revolute-revolute-spherical) spherical parallel manipulators and one cabin, called Twins. The cabin has an additional independent DOF for 360° continuous rotation, so it can be applied as a flight simulator for a fighter-aircraft to achieve spin maneuvering. Because of the introduction of the hybrid structure and double parallel manipulator of the mechanism, the redundancy exists with respect to both kinematics and actuation. Kinematics is carried out and Jacobian matrix is established by means of screw theory. The inverse kinematics is given out by the analytical method. 64 groups inverse solutions are showed in a table by permutation. Forward kinematics is solved by an effectively numerical method. The forward numerical method is realized based on the analytically inverse kinematics and Jacobian matrix. The numerical examples show that the forward numerical method can be used in real-time control. The rolling motion is considered in forward kinematics and a numerical example is given out. The proposed flight simulator can spin and there are three rotational DOF with a hybrid structure so that the novel flight simulator can be used in the field of the fighter-aircraft for pilots to train.