Flight control system development is a complex and multi-objective process, with extensive use of simulation. This paper suggests a new integrated approach in simulation usage – use of the same model throughout complete flight control system development process. Simulation starts with a refinement of system requirements and extends to preliminary design, design, hardware and software development, system integration, flying quality and reliability testing, and at the end, system validation and verification. The most difficult task is software reliability estimation and testing. A special mode of hardware-in-the-loop simulation configuration – "operational software reliability testing mode" is proposed for this task. The proposed simulation concept is applied on an unmanned aerial vehicle flight control system development, and simulation results of flying quality, reliability and vehicle clearance tests are shown as the example. The presented approach has proven to be a flexible tool for assessing flying qualities, hardware and software reliability and pilot-in-the-loop performance in a future simulated environment.
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