Development of flight simulator for human-powered aircraft - The road towards a world record

This is a preliminary report about our plan for a special-purpose flight simulator. The human-powered aircraft developed in Nihon University has achieved the Japanese flight distance record of 49.2 km in 2005. However, this Japanese record is still half the distance of the world record of 115.1 km that Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieved in 1988. Thus, the present goal for the development group of our university students is to break this world record. For this purpose, a research group for a human-powered flight support system was established to develop a special-purpose flight simulator for human-powered flight. The purpose of designing such a simulator is to provide the student pilot with a scientific and practical training facility and to feed the flight data and design factors back into an optimal design of the human-powered aircraft. That is, the simulator will be used to search for an optimal flight path planning, optimal power time-distribution program for the pilot, and the optimal configuration of the aircraft. To find the optimal flight path and optimal power distribution, an appropriate mathematical model for the pilot as a man-powered engine must also be analyzed and determined as well as a conventional pilot model in handling the control stick. The developed simulator will also be used to compare an ordinary student pilot with an athlete pilot. More details will be presented at the conference.