A Vital Topic... Deserving Of NASA's Attention (and YOURS)
Late last year, ANN's Aero-TV crews spied a truly marvelous piece of flight simulation technology... NASA Glenn's icing flight training simulator. Demonstrated at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC), we were incredibly impressed at the apparent accuracy of the model (ANN's Jim Campbell has plenty of Twin Otter time -- the aircraft used in the icing encounter sim model -- and knows only too well that the icing behavior they displayed is what he has experienced, personally, in real icing conditions).
The high-fidelity simulation model for icing effects flight training was developed from wind tunnel data for the DeHavilland DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft. First, a flight model of the un-iced airplane was developed and then modifications were generated to model the icing conditions.
The models were validated against data records from the NASA Twin Otter Icing Research flight test program with only ...