Real-Time Simulation

The design, development and testing of many engineering systems, such as aircraft and their flight-control systems, missiles, ship-propulsion systems, road vehicle suspension systems and certain kinds of chemical plant, can benefit, at certain stages of the process, from the use of computer simulation models which operate in the same timescale as the real system so that the execution time of the model is matched to the real system time. This is generally known as ‘real-time’ simulation. It is particularly important in applications in which the simulation may have to run with a human operator as part of a closed-loop system or in conjunction with real engineering hardware. Simulation may then be used to check interactions between individual items of equipment and to investigate the total system operation.