DAVE-ML is intended to encode (for transmission and long-term archive) an entire flight vehicle dynamic simulation data package, as is traditionally done in initial delivery and updates to engineering development, flight training, and accident investigation simulations. It is intended to provide a programming-language-independent representation of the aerodynamic, mass/inertia, landing gear, propulsion, and guidance, navigation and control laws for a particular vehicle.
Traditionally, flight simulation data packages are often a combination of paper documents and data files on magnetic or optical media. This collection of information is very much vendor-specific and is often incomplete or inconsistent. Many times, the preparing facility makes incorrect assumptions about how the receiving facility's simulation environment is structured. As a result, the re-hosting of the dynamic flight model by the receiving facility can take weeks or longer as the receiving facility staff learns the contents and arrangement of the data package, the model structure, the various data formats, variable names/units/sign conventions and then spends additional time running check cases (if any were included in the transmittal) and tracking down inevitable differences in results.
There are obvious benefits if this tedious, manual process could be mostly automated. Often, when a pair of facilities has exchanged one model, the transmission of another model is much faster since the receiving facility will probably have devised some scripts and processes to convert the data (both model and check-case data).
The purpose of DAVE-ML is to define a common exchange format for these flight dynamic models. The advantage gained is that any simulation facility or laboratory, after having written a DAVE-ML import and/or export script, could automatically receive and/or transmit such packages (and updates to those packages) rapidly with other DAVE-ML-compliant facilities.
To accomplish this goal, the DAVE-ML project is starting with the bulkiest part of the most aircraft simulation packages: the aerodynamic model. This early version of DAVE-ML can be used to transport a complete aerodynamics model, including descriptions of the aerodynamic build-up equations and the data tables, as well as include references to the documentation about the aerodynamic model and check-case data. This format also lends itself to any static subsystem model (i.e. one that contains no state vector) such as the mass & inertia model, or a weapons load-out model, or perhaps a navigational database. The only requirement is that model outputs can be unambiguously defined in terms of inputs, with no past history (state) information required.
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