Aerospace Analysis & Simulation
Aircraft Design, Analysis & Flight-Test Engineering
RDT provides aircraft design, engineering analysis, simulation, and test support grounded in extensive experience building and evaluating real aircraft. Our work connects aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, radar cross section, flight dynamics, guidance, navigation, and control. We use these disciplines to investigate vehicle behavior, evaluate design choices, support avionics integration, and understand differences between predicted and measured performance.
Production-aircraft experience.
Our founder’s background in composite aircraft design, construction, production, and flight testing brings practical knowledge of hardware and manufacturing into the analysis. We understand how a design decision affects the aircraft, the systems installed in it, and the work required to test it. Our founder’s aerospace production aircraft experience includes the BQM-167, BQM-177, MQM-178, GQM-173, and other aircraft and development programs. RDT brings that complete-aircraft perspective to design decisions from the beginning.
Product & Portfolio Exemplars
Aircraft design and MDO
RDT connects aircraft configuration, aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, performance, and stability through multidisciplinary design optimization. The objective is to evaluate how a design change affects the complete aircraft and identify tradeoffs that would be missed by treating each discipline independently.
Our founder’s published research on business-jet-class blended-wing-body aircraft combined conceptual design, performance analysis, lateral-directional stability investigation, wind-tunnel work, and flight simulation. He developed the MATLAB-based design and optimization framework linking aerodynamic and structural solvers, aircraft-design relationships, and the databases used for six-degree-of-freedom simulation.
That experience supports a connected engineering process: establish the requirements, evaluate candidate configurations, examine the interactions among disciplines, and carry the resulting models into simulation and test.
Extensive CFD and wind-tunnel work
Our aerodynamic work includes computational and experimental investigations across dozens of configurations, including production military aircraft and original blended-wing-body research. The purpose of an aerodynamic result is to support a decision: a configuration change, a performance prediction, a stability investigation, a simulation update, or a test plan. Our portfolio includes CFD, VLM, aerodynamic databases, stability and control assessment, and wind-tunnel correlation.
We connect aerodynamic analysis with the rest of the vehicle. A shape has to do more than look efficient in a flow visualization. It must work with the aircraft's structure, propulsion, controls, and mission requirements.
We have experience in flight regimes spanning hover and low-speed flight through supersonic, hypersonic, and re-entry-class velocities approaching Mach 30.
High-Fidelity 6DOF Flight simulation
We have built several nonlinear 6DOF flight simulators and used simulation as part of the development and analysis process, from design to flight testing.
RDT connects aerodynamic information, mass properties, propulsion, vehicle motion, and guidance and control in six-degree-of-freedom models. Our software portfolio also includes automated aerodynamic-database generation, wind-tunnel data reduction, post-flight analysis tools, trim solutions, linearized models, and control-development models. We have also worked extensively on parachute 3DOF simulation and recovery-system analysis.
The point is to keep the design, the model, and the test evidence connected. Simulation should inform the aircraft program, and measured behavior should inform the simulation.
Electromagnetics and RCS
Maxwell Lab is RDT’s in-house environment for electromagnetic simulation, radar cross section analysis, and coherent radar imaging. Its methods include Method of Moments (MoM), Electric Field Integral Equation (EFIE), Physical Optics (PO), Shooting-and-Bouncing Rays (SBR), coherent radar imaging, and hybrid and diffraction methods. The toolbox supports configurable frequency sweeps from 1–15 GHz (L- through lower Ku-band), frequency-dependent material properties, and 3D geometries including imported STL/CAD models. Material modeling includes aluminum, titanium, iron-particle/polymer surface treatments, anisotropic carbon-fiber laminates, and dielectric materials. Large-scale simulations employ accelerated numerical methods, compiled FMM3D libraries, C++ interfaces, and multicore OpenMP processing.
These analyses help engineers examine how geometry, materials, frequency, and viewing direction affect scattering behavior. Maxwell Lab connects computational electromagnetics with design evaluation, test planning, and interpretation of measured results.
Test and Model Evaluation
RDT turns ground- and flight-test measurements into evidence for engineering decisions. We assess sensor and telemetry data, reconstruct vehicle motion, and compare measured behavior with the corresponding engineering models. Residuals and repeatable differences help identify whether a discrepancy originates in the model, a sensor, timing, an actuator, or the implementation.
The resulting analyses support model refinement, control-system evaluation, and focused follow-on testing. Deliverables can include reconstructed trajectories, parameter estimates, model-to-test comparisons, and recommendations for the next test or design change.
The objective is to determine how well the model represents the tested system, where its limitations affect the engineering decision, and which additional measurements would most effectively resolve the remaining uncertainty.
Structures, Composites & FEA
RDT applies finite-element analysis and hands-on composite-aircraft experience to airframes, avionics enclosures, mounting hardware, and prototype assemblies. We evaluate how loads, geometry, material properties, and attachment conditions affect stress, deflection, stiffness, and structural response.
The analysis supports structural sizing, weight tradeoffs, component integration, and test planning. For carbon-fiber structures, directional material behavior, load paths, joints, and interfaces are central to the engineering problem.
We connect structural models with practical knowledge of fabrication and the aircraft systems the structure must support. Results are evaluated against the intended load cases and available test evidence, giving customers a basis for design decisions and focused verification.
Our in-house fabrication capabilities provide a direct connection between structural engineering, prototype hardware, and testing.
We stay with the problem after the flight.
Flight data can confirm a model. It can also expose an assumption that needs to change. Our experience includes post-flight performance analysis and accident investigations, bringing the same technical depth to understanding what happened as to predicting what should happen. That perspective shapes the entire development effort: build models that can be examined, retain the evidence needed to investigate discrepancies, and use the results to make the next engineering decision.
Build on a record of aircraft that left the drawing board.
Engage RDT for aircraft development, aerodynamic analysis, simulation, controls integration, or a difficult discrepancy between prediction and test. We bring more than an analysis capability. We bring experience with the aircraft—and the work required to make it real.