United States Air Force Stability and Control Digital DATCOM

Digital DATCOM requires an input file containing a geometric description of an aircraft, and outputs its corresponding dimensionless stability derivatives according to the specified flight conditions.

The report consists of Section 3 of the USAF Digital DATCOM Manual Volume I defines the inputs available for modeling an aircraft.

The SYNTHS Namelist allows the user to define the positions of the center of gravity and apexes of the wings.

Digital DATCOM also accepts wing planforms which change geometry along the span such as the F4 Phantom II which had 15 degrees of outboard dihedral.

in lieu of the data Digital DATCOM produces in the intermediate steps of its component build-up.

Digital DATCOM provides commands for outputting the dynamic derivatives (DAMP) as well as the stability coefficients of each components (BUILD).

The details of this output are defined in Section 6 of the USAF Digital DATCOM Manual Volume I.

When compared with modern methods of computational fluid dynamics, Digital DATCOM may seem antiquated.

Inlets, external stores, and other protuberances cannot be input because Digital DATCOM analyzes the fuselage as a body of revolution.

While the original DIGDAT program has been left relatively untouched, there has been a new front-end created that will allow the user to name the input file with something more significant than FOR005.DAT.

Aerospace Toolbox includes a function for importing output files from Digital DATCOM into MATLAB.

OpenDatcom is an open-source GUI for the Digital DATCOM created and hosted by the OpenAE [2] community.

OpenDatcom incorporates all the basic (non-experimental) functionality supported by the Digital DATCOM while providing real-time input error and bounds checking.

There has been some research in using Digital DATCOM in conjunction with wind tunnel studies to predict aerodynamics of structurally impaired aircraft.

The methodology can be used to quickly generate aerodynamic model for damaged aircraft for simulation and reconfigurable control.