DATCOM
Monday, 05 October 2009 14:09 | 
Written by Aleksey Matyushev | 
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The United States Air Force (USAF) Stability and Control Digital DATCOM is a multi- purpose program written in FORTRAN IV that analyzes the stability and control of a given aircraft. Through basic geometric properties of the aircraft, along with the given flight conditions and propulsion elements, the DATCOM is able to compile coefficients which closely describe the performance and stability of the aircraft at the given conditions.
SAMPLE "for005.dat" INPUT FILE
The analysis is done by creating an input file which is named "for005.dat". Input data is organized into NAMELISTS. Basic NAMELISTS include the flight conditions (FLTCON), synthesis (SYNTHS), body geometry (BODY), wing geometry (WGPLNF), horizontal tail (HTPLNF), and vertical tail geometry (VTPLNF). The input file is created in a text based editor in which the user manually inputs the parameters in a FORTRAN compatible format. Upon the creation of the input file, the user must use the command prompt window to run the DATCOM program. The program takes a second or two to execute and creates a number text based output files.
RUNNING DATCOM TROUGH THE COMMAND PROMPT
for006.dat file contains the most important output charecteristics. Opening the file with a text based editor allows the user to see the calculated static and dynamic coefficients.
SAMPLE "for006.dat" OUTPUT FILE
Instructions on the operation and available inputs has been collected into three manuals. These manuals will be posted under the resources page in the near future. Currently there is no active development on the original Digital DATCOM code. The software has been released into the community as FORTRAN IV open source code and was availble for download until recentely from USAF Research Laboratory Control Theory Optimization Branch. Unfortunately for some reason, there has been no way to attain the original code. OpenAE will attempt to contact the USAF laboratory and attain a copy, until then, the only way of attaining the program is to download Datcom+ or OpenDatcom.
Currently the OpenAE community supports this original version of software. If you have any questions relating to its operation please do not hesitate to post a question in our forum.
Last Updated (Wednesday, 30 December 2009 22:06)
