Eclipse 500 Project Title: Eclipse 500 Engineering Simulator Project Customer: Eclipse Aviation

Eclipse 500 Commercial Aircraft

Eclipse 500 Engineering Simulator (Figure F-1)

Project Overview: This program was a trainer development project.  Using a customer supplied aircraft hulk as well as other components, ACME designed, developed, tested and delivered the hardware for an engineering simulator for use in the development of the Eclipse 500 business jet and integrated the hardware with the customer supplied software.  ACME responded to an Eclipse inquiry to build the trainer and was under contract in less than 30 days.  Figure 1 shows the completed engineering trainer.

ACME Services Used: Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering.

Project Details: The trainer emulated the cockpit of the Eclipse 500 business jet.  ACME used a three (3) channel electric control loading system to provide primary feedback to the primary flight controls.  The secondary cockpit controls used friction devices for force feedback.  The host computer was PC based and interfaced to the signal I/O equipment and the cockpit flat panel displays.    Development of the trainer was complicated by the fact that the aircraft had not yet been built and cockpit components were not available.  Consequently, ACME depended on customer supplied 3-D Unigraphics solid models of the aircraft to develop the cockpit shell and components.  The Eclipse aircraft 3-D models were downloaded to the ACME 3D engineering tools to quickly produce trainer shop drawings.  Configuration management of the hardware provided traceability from the Eclipse models to the ACME models to the delivered trainer hardware.  Figure F-2 shows the 3-D model of the cockpit. In fact, the contract was amended to have ACME provide duplicates of the cockpit components, which were used on the initial flight aircraft.

After development of the trainer hardware, ACME engineers worked jointly with Eclipse engineers to integrate the hardware with the  Eclipse provided software and visual system.

Delivery Date: January, 2002

Customer Comments: N/A

Eclipse 500 Simulator Rendering (Figure F-2)