Abstract

One of the CAE product lines is commercial aircraft flight simulators for which over 400 engineers develop the simulation codes. Currently, aircraft design documents are converted into source code manually. This approach is time consuming, generates large number of errors in the code, and the code generated is very hard to debug. An alternative approach is to use commercially available software development tools to implement the design documents into a visual environment and automatically generate the simulation code for the implemented model. This approach is expected to reduce the software development process, minimize the number of errors in the generated simulation software, and provide user-friendly environment for debugging the code more easily and efficiently, and plus many more advantages. This thesis contributes in the development of such an approach. It addresses the new software development method using MATRIX X which is one of the leading commercial software development tools widely used in aerospace industries. Two aircraft systems, medium commercial jet's flight warning computer and a generic autopilot, have been chosen to evaluate the use of MATRIX X as software development tool. This thesis will explore the use of MATRIX X and its advantages over manual coding, and will identify if there are any evaluation criteria or implementation issues that will make the use of MATRIX X impractical. In addition, it will be examined if there is any need for post-processing utility to adapt the generated code to flight simulation software environment.