J2 Provides High Fidelity Simulator for Hill Helicopters

J2 Aircraft Dynamics are proud to announce that they have delivered the first engineering flight simulator for the Hill Helicopter HX-50. This high fidelity simulator integrates a Blade Element Rotor Model (BERM) from CHARM with tail rotor and gearbox developed by j2 and connects them directly into the fully changeable helicopter model within the j2 Universal Tool-Kit software . This means that as the aircraft is developed by the Hill Helicopters engineering team, then it can be flown and tested on the simulator instantly without the need to write or compile any code. The j2 Universal Tool-Kit has already shown significant development advantages allowing hundreds of test cases to be flown and evaluated offline, and now with the integration of the simulator, Hill are able to evaluate the aircraft’s flying qualities with a pilot in the loop simultaneously. Avionics and displays can be tested with accurate engineering data and can support the Human Machine Interface (HMI) development. The aircraft can be tested with and without the Stability Augmentation System (SAS) and the full autopilot.

By having a high fidelity simulator with a full BERM connected directly into the engineering design tools is a game changer and will only further accelerate the progress that Hill Helicopters are making. As the aircraft design evolves, so the model fidelity automatically improves. This same software tool-kit can also go on to support flight test and certification and will eventually provide a Full Flight Simulator to support Pilot training.

Dr Jason Hill said, “the j2 Universal Tool-Kit has already proven to be a very powerful tool and now with the integration of the simulator we get to really fly the aircraft at the same time as designing it”.

For more information on this application or to discuss this further you can contact j2 as follows:

Paul Jenkins on paul.jenkins@j2aircraft.com