Preparation of Papers for AIAA Technical Conferences
Gravity Modeling for Variable Fidelity Environments Michael M. Madden* NASA, Hampton, VA, 23681 Aerospace simulations can model worlds, such as the Earth, with differing levels of fidel- ity. The simulation may represent the world as a plane, a sphere, an ellipsoid, or a high- order closed surface. The world may or may not rotate. The user may select lower fidelity models based on computational limits, a need for simplified analysis, or comparison to other data. However, the user will also wish to retain a close semblance of behavior to the real world. The effects of gravity on objects are an important component of modeling real-world behavior. Engineers generally equate the term gravity with the observed free-fall accelera- tion. However, free-fall acceleration is not equal to all observers. To observers on the sur- face of a rotating world, free-fall acceleration is the sum of gravitational attraction and the centrifugal acceleration due to the world’s rotation. On the other hand, free-fall accelera- tion equals gravitational attraction to an observer in inertial space. Surface-observed simu- lations (e.g. aircraft), which use non-rotating world models, may choose to model observed free fall acceleration as the “gravity” term; such a model actually combines gravitational at- traction with centrifugal acceleration due to the Earth’s rotation. However, this modeling choice invites confusion as one evolves the simulation to higher fidelity world models or adds inertial observers. Care must be taken to model gravity in concert with the world model to avoid denigrating the fidelity of modeling observed free fall.
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