Mathematical computing software developer MathWorks has launched new flight analysis and visualisation capabilities for aerospace design with MATLAB and Simulink.

MATLAB is a programming environment for algorithm development, data analysis, visualisation and numeric computation. Simulink is a graphical environment for simulation and model-based design for multidomain dynamic and embedded systems.

In the Release 2018b, Aerospace Blockset adds flight control analysis tools, which will aid in analysing flying qualities of the vehicles.

The Aerospace Toolbox enables customisable user interfaces featuring cockpit flight instruments, which help to visualise and analyse the motion and behaviour of aerospace vehicles.

“This will help them meet development deadlines while ensuring high-fidelity and compliance with standards.”

Engineers will now be able to develop continuous workflows right from the initial stages of vehicle design and development to flight prototyping, thereby minimising the time between design and testing phase.

Aerospace designs have to meet stringent design and regulatory requirements for compliance with standards such as MIL-F-8785C, DO-178 B and DO-178 C. For this, engineering teams usually depend on Simulink and the DO Qualification Kit.

Engineers working with in-house or third-party tools for flight visualisation and analysis will now be able to work directly within the Simulink environment for flight simulation, visualisation, and analysis.

With the use of model-based design and Simulink in the design workflow, engineering teams will be able to easily maintain models and code besides sharing those models across teams and with contractors so that all requirements are adequately met.

MathWorks design automation marketing director Paul Barnard said: “The ability to model, simulate, analyse, and visualise is critical to the highly regulated aerospace industry. That’s why Simulink has become the design environment of choice for these engineers.

“Now these teams can reduce design time even more because they can iterate to reach prototyping in a few weeks instead of many months. This will help them meet development deadlines while ensuring high-fidelity and compliance with standards.”

With the help of Aerospace Blockset, engineers can quickly model, simulate and analyse aerospace vehicle dynamics.

The latest in R2018b are flight control analysis tools that aid to carry out advanced analysis on the dynamic response of aerospace vehicles.

These tools consist of templates to begin and functions that help to compute and review the flying qualities of airframes modelled in Simulink.

Aerospace Toolbox offers tools and functions to help analyse and visualise aerospace vehicle motion with the help of reference standards and models. The latest in R2018b is the addition of flight instruments that showcase measurements using standard cockpit instruments.

Set up in 1984, MathWorks has more than 4,000 employees in 16 countries, with headquarters in Natick, Massachusetts, US.