In order to improve the dynamic performance of a piloted flight simulator hexapod, a study was carried out to quantify the effects of payload mass and inertia properties on hexapod dynamic performance. Based on the Lagrange-Euler formulation, a dynamics model of hexapod parallel mechanism including the payload mass characteristics was built, and then analyzed with the real hexapod through experiments. According to a large amount of experiment datum, the influence of payload mass and inertia properties on a piloted flight simulator hexapod dynamic performance was obtained, and these results are significant for the high speed and high acceleration control of the hexapod mechanism.

An electric control loading system for aircraft simulation was analyzed and modeled to find a linear state space mathematical model and state feedback. An optimal control scheme based on the minimum integral of the squared difference between desired and actual output was shown to be effective by comparing the output values of the system with previously obtained experimental data. A linear state space mathematical model and state feedback appear to provide satisfactory means for controlling an electric control loading system can be adjusted to simulate a wide variety of real aircraft by altering input and output gains at the force analog computer when aircraft parameters are changed.

In order to enhance the innervations fidelity of simulators, an adaptive nonlinear controller is developed, which guarantees parallel mechanisms closed loop system global asymptotical stability and the convergence of posture tracking error in Cartesian space. The problem of rapid tracking under the condition of the wide range, nonlinear and variable load is solved. After the adaptive nonlinear controller is actually applied to the hexapod parallel mechanisms of simulator, the dynamic-static capabilities of motion system is tested by amplitude-frequency response and posture precision. The experimental results show that the static precision improves ten times and system output amplitude increase and the phase lag reduce with respect to the same input signal in Cartesian space in comparison with the traditional proportional and derivative controlling method in joint space. Therefore the adaptive nonlinear controller can effectively improve the dynamic-static response performance of the hexapod parallel mechanisms of simulators in Cartesian space.