Browse Topic: Airline fleets
Developing a comprehensive autonomy solution for the Army's current and future aircraft fleet requires a robust computational and perception capability for decision-making across the entire flight envelope without a pilot. This also requires a flight control system and infrastructure capable of executing autonomous decisions in complex mission environments. Ongoing development of automation and autonomy, utilizing a wide range of perception sensors, has been conducted on platforms such as Sikorsky's S-70 and the Army's UH-60Mx aircraft. This work builds upon previous efforts and leverages ongoing collaborations with industry, the Department of War (DoW), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to advance autonomous capabilities for both optionally piloted and uncrewed aircraft.
Eaton’s Aerospace Group is collaborating with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on the advancement of technologies to increase aircraft efficiency, enable aircraft electrification, and reduce carbon emissions. Leveraging our expertise as an intelligent power management company, Eaton’s products and research include hydraulic power packs, electromechanical actuation (EMA), thermal management systems, and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) compatible systems. Eaton Blended Power TM systems improve efficiency through eliminating all centralized hydraulic circuits with distributed power that is provided by a combination of hydraulic power packs and EMA for a More Electric Aircraft (MEA). EMA systems, including electrical synchronization, reduce the usage of hydraulics and provide additional functionality that benefits the aircraft. With MEA comes higher energy and thermal densities, resulting in the need for advanced thermal management. Eaton’s scalable and modular thermal management systems enable electrification by maintaining the performance and longevity of electrical systems. Thermal management systems, which use forced liquid cooling systems, also improve system reliability. Aerospace leaders like Eaton, investors, and policymakers have conducted significant research to explore SAF’s potential, as well as its compatibility with today’s global aircraft fleet and current fuel systems and equipment. The aviation industry is already achieving major milestones towards 100% SAF, enabled through Eaton’s SAF-validated fuel system components. Eaton is also researching the use of hydrogen, either through fuel cells or direct burn to power zero emissions aircraft. This paper details these technologies, which are helping to power the future of sustainable flight.
For the last few decades, Canada's National Research Council (NRC) has been at the forefront in analyzing dynamic systems and developing tools to construct aircraft models based on flight test data. With a fixed and rotary-wing aircraft fleet available, NRC has the capability to perform leading edge R&D System Identification (SI); this worldleading SI technology has been developed and has assisted industry partners, Department of National Defense (DND), and various universities in aircraft simulation and development. As a result, NRC has gained extensive experience in modeling aircraft using SI techniques. In collaboration with CAE, this paper demonstrates the acceleration of the NRC's current flight modeling techniques, highlighting recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). A new Bayesian ML software is being developed to identify a 6 degrees of freedom (6-DoF) quasisteady model using simulated flight test data. To achieve this, data from the CAE Sample electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) simulation platform vehicle during hover maneuvers is utilized. Additionally, this paper presents results on extending the model to include rotor dynamics using the classical SI approach for comparison purposes. In summary, all methods provide a high-fidelity model; with the higher model structure, the vertical acceleration match was noticeably better.
Australia has embarked on an extraordinary reform to design, develop and implement a new and contemporary Defence Aviation Safety Framework. The program seeks to establish a single Defence Aviation Safety Authority (DASA) and issue a comprehensive and integrated suite of Defence Aviation Safety Regulation (DASR) for initial and continuing airworthiness, flight operations, air navigation, aerodromes (inclusive of ship-borne heliports) and safety management systems. While reforms of this scale can often be triggered by reviews into major aircraft accidents, such as The Nimrod Review by Charles Haddon-Cave QC in October 2009, Australia initiated the reform when new aircraft fleets were being introduced and at a time of arguably high-levels of aviation safety. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explain the compelling reason for change; providing a twenty-five-year retrospective analysis of Australia’s previous Defence aviation safety framework to give a rich picture of the difficulties faced by increased commercialization from the late 1990s, globalization in the 2000s, and the recent emergence of strict work, health and safety legislation in Australia.
The U.S. Army monitors the structural integrity of its rotary-wing aircraft fleet through annual evaluations and reporting via the Airframe Condition Evaluation (ACE) program. ACE evaluations capture the location and character of structural defects for each aircraft, which are then available for trending and detailed analysis by engineers with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center (CCDC AvMC). As analytic methods are increasingly advanced through the digital thread, CCDC AvMC has sought to improve available trending, modeling, and analysis tools beyond status quo to provide higher fidelity visuals to both aid communication with decision makers, and also to reveal structural defect trends which may not otherwise be evident. This paper will detail the development and utility of the ACE Color Mapping Application within the ACE Mapping Module and its impact on product support of U.S. Army aircraft with regard to airframe structural integrity.
Fuel availability is a security imperative for aircraft fleets, and tactical dependence on fuel will critically tie global fleets to investments in new drag-reduction technologies that optimize fuel utilization. Roberto Guerrero, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Air Force for Operational Energy, recently wrote in Defense News that “when we use our assets more efficiently in peacetime, we build a more energy-aware culture that will better prepare our airmen for tomorrow's fight, if and when it happens.” Adopting sustainability measures today directly affects operational and national security, and it benefits us all to find ways to use less. In its 2019 Sustainability Report and Implementation Plan, the Department of Defense states that its sustainability efforts “focus on mission assurance, operational readiness, and cost-effective business practices.” The report goes on to add that, “The Department strives to maximize the efficient use of mission-critical energy, water, and material resources…[to] ensure we are prepared when threats arise in the future.”
Usage credits may be used to extend retirement lives for structural components. However, any credit substantiation must account for the contribution of conservative usage assumptions to the current level of safety. Structural reliability methods have been proposed as a means to achieve this end. Herein a new, relative method to determine a practically equivalent reliability (and safety) for aircraft fleets is developed using system reliability theory. Simple mathematical examples are used to illustrate the basic principles. A more realistic example based on the AHS Fatigue and Damage Tolerance subcommittee Round Robin problem is presented. These examples show that, even if only a few aircraft in a fleet operate in a severe manner, these aircraft drive the overall fleet reliability. This means that many aircraft may be able to receive credit without having any appreciable change on fleet reliability. A generalized procedure to apply the method to real world problems is developed. Use of the method as part of a certification methodology is presented along with a justification of what change in reliability would be practically equivalent. Application of this method may allow for safe extension of component lives based on usage.
The U.S. Army traditionally has used a time-based, on-condition maintenance paradigm that relies on at-aircraft inspections and periodic in-depth phased inspections to determine condition and ensure airworthiness. The result is a significant maintenance burden, both scheduled and unscheduled, and excessive aircraft downtime. The objective of the Aviation Development Directorate (ADD) and Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation (SAC) Capability-Based Operations and Sustainment Technology-Aviation (COST-A) program was to develop and demonstrate an integrated set of high value diagnostics, prognostics, and system health management technologies that reduce scheduled inspections and preventive maintenance while enhancing safety. More than two dozen Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) technologies across six primary rotorcraft systems (propulsion, drive train, airframe/structural, rotor, electrical, and vehicle management) were matured to technology readiness level (TRL) 6. These technologies were integrated into a prototype laboratory on-board system built around the Integrated Vehicle Health Management Unit (IVHMU) currently installed in all UH-60 Black Hawk aircraft and successfully demonstrated to perform concurrently in representative simulated flight scenarios, using playback data from healthy and faulty components. A subset of these technologies, jointly selected by ADD and SAC, was flight tested on an HH-60M aircraft to further reduce the risk of transitioning these technologies. This paper summarizes the flight-test efforts, with a focus on results obtained for the technologies under test. Upon deployment to the UH-60 aircraft fleet, these PHM technologies can enable the Army to transition to a more effective automated condition-based maintenance (CBM) paradigm.
The U.S. Army traditionally has used a time-based, on-condition maintenance paradigm that relies on at-aircraft inspections and periodic in-depth phase inspections to determine condition and ensure airworthiness. The result is a significant maintenance burden, both scheduled and unscheduled, and excessive aircraft downtime. The objective of the Aviation Development Directorate (ADD) and Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation (SAC) Capability-Based Operations and Sustainment Technology-Aviation (COST-A) program was to develop and demonstrate an integrated set of high value diagnostics, prognostics, and system health management technologies that reduce scheduled inspections and preventive maintenance while enhancing safety. More than two dozen Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) technologies across six primary rotorcraft systems (propulsion, drive train, airframe/structural, rotor, electrical, and vehicle management) were matured to technology readiness level (TRL) 6. These technologies were integrated into a prototype laboratory on-board system built around the Integrated Vehicle Health Management Unit (IVHMU) currently installed in all UH-60 Black Hawk aircraft and successfully demonstrated to perform concurrently in representative simulated flight scenarios, using playback data from healthy and faulty components. A subset of these technologies, jointly selected by ADD and SAC, has been prepared for an upcoming flight test on a UH-60M aircraft to further reduce the risk of transitioning these technologies. This paper summarizes the flight-test preparation efforts, including the implementation of associated algorithms within a representative integrated on-aircraft and ground-based system software environment. Upon deployment to the UH-60 aircraft fleet, these PHM technologies can enable the Army to transition to a condition-based maintenance (CBM) paradigm.
For air crew and maintenance personnel, successful aircraft employment requires avionics that are reliable and available. With few exceptions, older aircraft contain older avionics systems which over time become increasingly unreliable and unmaintainable due to their obsolescence. As aircraft age, maintenance costs increase as replacement or reconditioned parts for critical system components become economically or practically unavailable. This availability problem is routinely experienced in the US military, whose aircraft fleet has an average age in excess of 25 years. Reliability and maintainability (R&M) problems lead to high cost of ownership, a cost which eventually increases to an unacceptable level. Modernizing older avionics systems requires identifying the problematic system components (in this discussion, Line Replaceable Units [LRUs] and Shop Replaceable Units [SRUs]), functionally reverse engineering the components, and then deploying the re-engineered components. Reverse engineering a component is typically required, since complete technical data is rarely available. Battelle has modernized several legacy components by applying the reverse engineering / re-engineering model described in this paper. Re-engineering increases component reliability and availability, which in turn increases aircraft reliability and availability, and also results in lower cost of ownership. As an example of addressing failure and poor maintainability of an avionics component, this model is applied to the reverse engineering and re-engineering of an A-10C Upgraded Data Transfer Unit (UDTU). Modernization by form-fit-function replacement components can be a major tool in resolving the obsolescence, poor reliability, and rising life cycle cost problems plaguing our current rotorcraft avionics systems.
Industry is in the midst of new initiatives to develop lighter, stronger aero engine fan blades. The ongoing competitive battle to supply the engines for tens of thousands of new-generation commercial airplanes that are predicted to be required to satisfy airline demands over the next two decades has seen the major powerplant suppliers developing twin roadmaps for the future. While long-term prospects for true game-changing engine configurations remain real, and advanced work continues on ultra-high-bypass ducted-fan and openrotor solutions, other efforts are being directed by the major players that aim at achieving ever-better performance out of improved aerodynamic design and advanced materials manufacturing techniques applied to more evolutionary turbofan configurations.
NASA's Strategic Plan for the Aerospace Technology Enterprise includes ambitious objectives focused on affordable air travel, reduced emissions, and expanded aviation-system capacity. NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, in cooperation with NASA Ames Research Center, the Boeing Company, and the University of California, Los Angeles, has embarked on an autonomous-formation-flight project that promises to make significant strides towards these goals.
This article examines trends and issues in the regional aircraft industry through the eyes of Aerospace Congress & Exhibition (ACE) host company Bombardier Aerospace. It also takes a look at ACE, which addresses topics such as aviation safety, manufacturing; automated fastening, and aircraft design. The regional aircraft industry has seen a bit of a growth spurt post 9/11. In fact, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), regional jets will lead the recovery in commercial passenger traffic over the next decade. Regional airlines are more flexible than major airlines in response to rapidly changing industry conditions, providing them with the unique ability to service a wide variety of market types, both efficiently and effectively. John Holding, the Executive Vice President of Engineering and Product Development for Bombardier Aerospace who is serving as Executive Chair for the 2003 Aerospace Congress & Exhibition (see sidebar on next page), has witnessed the shift in market since 9/11. “There's been a tendency for airlines to migrate to smaller, more efficient aircraft-to transfer routes to their regional subsidiaries,” he said. “We've seen a significant decline in the traffic, and the regionals seem to be maintaining-if not increasing-their revenue on passenger volumes since 9/11.”
JUST YESTERDAY, simulation tackled the issues of digital technology in a new generation of aircraft, but here we face another quantum leap as we look beyond the Boeing 757/767 model airplanes. The engineering simulator has evolved, over a period of 25 years, from a relatively modest beginning, to a sophisticated design tool essential to the development of new airplanes and weapons systems. The decisions involved in the management of simulation facilities has also evolved from choosing a modest “take-what-you-can-get” product line, to picking from warehouses full of “goodies,” all of which have their associated payoffs. As a background, the authors will attempt to outline from personal experience and long-term history with engineering simulation, the steps that were taken to reach the present level of sophistication in engineering simulators at Boeing. Engineering flight simulators have assumed an increasingly crucial role in the development and testing of new product lines in the aviation industry. Significant flight operational cost savings have resulted from the new generation of digital systems, promoting airline fleet modernization. Both part-task and fully instrumented man-in-the-loop aircraft simulators are being used extensively for the development and integration testing of these new systems. Simulation has proven to be a high payoff tool with increasing recognition from a competitive airline industry. In other words, simulation has “come of age.” From a present day technology base, we will attempt to look down the tunnel of the future and consider the demands of simulation for 1990 and beyond. An ever-increasing growth in computing requirements arises from the increasing sophistication of new airplane hardware and airborne software, and from a user community which demands ever-increasing fidelity. More models of software need to be incorporated into simulations; more and better data is being made available, all leading to more detailed simulations than ever before. In addition, the user community keeps expanding, which often leads to developing simulations never before attempted. All of this requires management to re-evaluate computing structure, configuration, and implementation into a mini, micro, multi, and/or concurrent processing world. The arrival of the engineering workstation poses yet another challenge as many of the exclusive functions of the simulation programmer become accessible to the design engineer. This means developing adequate help systems, friendly user interface, and workstation integration into the real-time network. Artificial intelligence technology holds some promise for human interface issues, but systems available today are not sufficient to meet the needs. Last but not least, the demands of the future involve a global re-education of simulation software personnel toward Ada*, structured methodology, and “embedded” designs. Experience in the most prevalent simulation languages does not easily lend itself to this re-education process. Engineering flight simulation - it spells out a revolution of change, technology forefronts of the future, and exciting challenges to those involved.
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