Patent ID: 8380473

Claim:
A method of modeling dynamic characteristics of a flight vehicle, comprising: collecting input data specifying flight vehicle parameters at a steady-state condition for modeling variables of flight vehicle response to dynamic forces during steady-state operation of the flight vehicle, the input data including modal input data specifying one or more structural flexibility modes, wherein the one or more structural flexibility modes includes a set of bending modes, each bending mode defined by parameters specifying bending displacement of the flight vehicle at key nodes in the flight vehicle, the parameters defining each bending mode include at least one of a mode frequency, a damping coefficient, a generalized mass, and a generalized mode shape at the key nodes in the flight vehicle, the key nodes including force application points and sensors; converting the input data into state-space systems data for use by at least one utility pro-gram module to create a state-space system modeling one or more components of flight vehicle activity, the at least one utility program module generating a systems data output file comprising at least one matrix mapping the input data to the state-space systems data; and generating an output file for simulating flight vehicle design and performance based on at least one matrix mapping the input data to the state-space systems data.