Simplified 6DoF Flight Model of the Missile

Flight simulation of air-to-air and ground-to-air missiles is usually performed with the use of rigid-body six degrees of freedom equations of motion. Such model can be further simplified by two assumptions: firstly, the missile is symmetric in both horizontal and vertical plane and secondly, the roll motion of the missile is automatically stabilized and thus the roll dynamics is excluded from the simulation. These assumptions allow simplifications in formulation of the Equations of Motion and the reduction of the total number of required aerodynamic parameters. This paper presents a mathematical formulation of such model. The first part of the paper introduces the development of Equations of Motion for symmetric missile utilizing the locked roll axis. In the second part, two most common approaches for expressions for aerodynamic coefficients are explained together with the simplifications arising from the symmetry and locked roll axis. Finally, the third part of the paper proposes basic guidelines for determination of the missile aerodynamic characteristics with the use of the component build-up method.