Aerospace Blockset

Model, simulate, and analyze aerospace vehicle dynamics

Aerospace Blockset provides Simulink reference examples and blocks for modeling, simulating, and analyzing high-fidelity aircraft, rotorcraft, and spacecraft platforms. The blockset includes vehicle dynamics, validated models of the flight environment, and blocks for pilot behavior, actuator dynamics, and propulsion. Built-in aerospace math operations and coordinate system and spatial transformations let you represent atmospheric vehicle and spacecraft motion and orientation. To examine simulation results, you can connect visualization blocks, including photorealistic views, to your model.

Aerospace Blockset provides standard model architectures for building reusable vehicle platform models. These models can support flight and mission analysis; conceptual studies; detailed mission design; guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) algorithm development; software integration testing; and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing for applications in autonomous flight, radar, and communications.

What Is Aerospace Blockset?

A jet airliner, a search-and-rescue helicopter, and a quadcopter in flight.

Atmospheric Flight

For atmospheric flight platforms, including rotorcraft, use blocks to model dynamics, perform simulations, and understand system behavior under various flight and environment conditions.

Documentation | Examples

Spacecraft Simulation

Model, simulate, and analyze the motion and dynamics of spacecraft and satellite constellations. Use solar system ephemeris data to calculate the position and velocity of celestial objects over time.

Modeling a GNSS Satellite Constellation Video (5:19)

Documentation | Examples

Flight Visualization

Visualize and understand aerospace vehicle dynamics by using cockpit flight instruments, connecting to the FlightGear flight simulator, or connecting your simulation to a photorealistic 3D environment with Unreal Engine^®

Simulating Aircraft in Unreal Engine-based 3D Environment Video (4:47)

Documentation | Examples

Overlay of three vehicle component blocks: a nonlinear actuator, a jet engine, and a pilot model.

Vehicle Components

Model vehicle components, such as linear and nonlinear actuators, human pilot behavior, and engine systems.

Documentation | Examples

A Simulink model of a De Havilland Beaver airframe next to a graph of its short-period undamped natural frequency response.

Flight and Mission Analysis

Use templates and functions to perform advanced analysis on the dynamic response of aerospace vehicles. Perform high-level mission analysis with the satelliteScenario object from Aerospace Toolbox.

Lunar Mission Analysis with the Orbit Propagator Block

Documentation | Examples

Four global maps showing different metrics for the Earth’s gravitational field.

Environment Models

Use validated environment models to represent standard atmospheric, gravity, and magnetic field profiles as well as standard wind conditions.

Documentation | Examples

A Simulink block diagram used to model the Apollo 11 lander next to a phase plane plot for the yaw axis control.

Guidance, Navigation, and Control

Use guidance blocks to calculate distance between vehicles; navigation blocks to model accelerometers, gyroscopes, and IMUs; and controller blocks to control the motion of aerospace vehicles.

Drone Simulation and Control, Part 1: Setting Up the Control Problem Video (14:11)

Documentation | Examples