Aero-optical effect correction has become a crucial issue in airborne infrared imaging. However, it is impractical to test the correction algorithm using flight tests and numerical simulation because of its high cost. This study proposes a dynamic imaging simulation method for the infrared aero-optical effect based on a continuously varying Gaussian superposition model. The influence of infrared image degradation under different high-speed aerodynamic flow fields was investigated in detail. A continuously varying Gaussian superposition model was established for flight speed, altitude, and attitude. A dynamic infrared scene simulation model was constructed. Experimental results show that the proposed method can realistically simulate actual aero-optical effects of any flight case. Moreover, it can simulate continuous frames of aerodynamically degraded infrared images. The method uses a simpler model than numerical simulation and provides more data for multitype tasks.
Keywords: aero-optical effect; infrared imaging degradation; point spread function.