NASA Internship

Langley Research Center

Fall 2023

Internship Overview

I worked as an intern in the Aeronautics Systems Analysis Branch at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton Virginia over the Fall of 2023. My work supported the Advanced Concepts Incubator efforts to create a Rapid Conceptual Development Environment (RapCDE). The purpose of RapCDE is to perform automated trade space explorations of aircraft concepts intended for Regional Air Mobility (RAM) operations.


My work as an ASAB intern included developing:


I was able to submit and present a research article at the 2024 AIAA AVIATION conference covering the methods developed during my internship. You can find that article here: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2024-4051

Automated FDM Generation

The ability to automatically update flight dynamics models as aircraft concepts change was a primary goal of my work. To achieve this, I used the DAVE-ML FDM toolset to automatically generate and update Simulink model blocks within a full 6-DOF flight simulator. The simulation workflow shown in the figure to the right demonstrates the automated process of generating aerodynamic data, updating flight dynamics models, and running trade space analyses.

Control System Design

This work utilized PI control systems to automate the takeoff and landing analysis scripts. These control systems included climb angle/ glide slope, flare path, and airspeed controllers. Additional single-input-single-output controllers were used to help maintain heading and bank angle control. The climb angle controller, including pitch rate limiting, is shown below.

Takeoff and Landing Analyses

These methods were used to demonstrate takeoff and landing estimates for an example twin-engine light transport aircraft. Simulation results can be used to analyze takeoff distances (distance to 50 ft obstacle clearance), landing distance, sink rate at touch down, and climb performance under nominal and critical loss of thrust conditions.

Critical Loss of Thrust Trim

The trim methods within the simulation toolset can be used to evaluate performance under a critical loss of thrust. These solutions are useful in sizing the control surfaces of an aircraft.