Simulation of Shipboard Flight Dynamics

Utah State Aerolab, and NAWCAD: Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division

March 2026 - Ongoing

Purpose and Objectives

The Naval Air Warfare Center has commissioned the team to simulate the landing and takeoff processes of a small VTOL aircraft in a semi-active shipboard environment to better estimate safe flight envelopes.

A low-fidelity approach to this challenge sidesteps methods that are costly with respect to time, such as CFD. Saving time will permit R&D teams to get to a viable solution much sooner than industry standard, therefore expending fewer resources and beginning real-world testing earlier.

The VTOL

A Naval drone, the TRV150 by Malloy Aeronautics will be the vehicle of focus for the project. It is a heavy duty coaxial octocopter capable of maneuvering payloads of up to 170 lbs. Note that the payload area must also be accounted for when considering flight simulation as the size and weight of each payload can have a significant impact on in-flight performance.

PX4 and QGroundControl

PX4 is an open-source flight control software that acts as an autopilot for this project. PX4 also handles motor speeds, navigation along set paths, and contains most of the prebuilt files necessary to simulate a coaxial octocopter. Mission planning is derived using QGroundControl, another open-source platform. QGC relays real-time telemetry to MAVRIK, permitting the team to harvest and interpret data crucial to mission success.

MAVRIK Flight Simulation

Flight simulation is executed with the Utah State Aerolab's MAVRIK program. This in-house flight simulator takes into account the real-world parameters and conditions set forth by the data from NAWCAD, and induces those effects on the TRV150 during flight. These simulations focus only on the takeoff and landing phases of each flight with varying payload weights. The project's end goal will be achieved when Monte Carlo simulations illustrating the accuracy of the team's low-fidelity approach can be compared to the accuracy of high-fidelity, full validation methods like computational fluid dynamics. These accuracy assessments will be passed on to NAWCAD to rapidly predict possible outcomes of given mission parameters.

**reword to talk about "predicting safe operational zones on the carrier for the TRV150"