National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Small Business Innovation Research & Technology Transfer 2008 Program Solicitations

TOPIC: A1 Aviation Safety

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A1.01 Mitigation of Aircraft Aging and Durability-related Hazards
A1.02 Sensing and Diagnostic Capability for Aircraft Aging and Damage
A1.03 Prediction of Aging Effects
A1.04 Aviation External Hazard Sensor Technologies
A1.05 Crew Systems Technologies for Improved Aviation Safety
A1.06 Technologies for Improved Design and Analysis of Flight Deck Automation
A1.07 On-Board Flight Envelope Estimation for Unimpaired and Impaired Aircraft
A1.08 Engine Lifing and Prognosis for In-Flight Emergencies
A1.09 Robust Flare Planning and Guidance for Unimpaired and Impaired Aircraft
A1.10 Detection of In-Flight Aircraft Anomalies
A1.11 Integrated Diagnosis and Prognosis of Aircraft Anomalies
A1.12 Mitigation of Aircraft Structural Damage

The Aviation Safety Program focuses on the Nation's aviation safety challenges of the future. This vigilance for safety must continue in order to meet the projected increases in air traffic capacity and realize the new capabilities envisioned for the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). The Aviation Safety Program will conduct research to improve the intrinsic safety attributes of future aircraft and to eliminate safety-related technology barriers. The program is focusing on a foundational approach to advancing knowledge in core disciplines (e.g., computational methods, material science), which in turn are used to build integrated multidisciplinary system-level models, tools, and technologies. This year, the scope of the aviation safety subtopics has been focused to develop specific technologies that are needed to accomplish program goals. It is expected there will be approximately one award per A1 subtopic with quality proposals.

This approach focuses on furthering our understanding of the underlying physics, chemistry, materials, etc. of aeronautics phenomena when broken down to these most basic elements. The results at the fundamental level will be integrated at the discipline and multi-discipline levels to ultimately yield system-level integrated capabilities, methods, and tools for analysis, optimization, prediction, and design that will enable improved safety for a range of missions, vehicle classes, and crew configurations.

Example areas of program interest include research directed at the detection, prediction and mitigation/management of aging-related hazards of future civilian and military aircraft; designs of revolutionary adaptive flight decks; in-flight detection, diagnosis, prognosis of aircraft health, preventative and adaptive systems for in-flight operability; informed logistics and maintenance graceful recovery from in-flight failures; software safety assurance and formal verification methods for safety-critical systems; as well as system-level integrated resilient control technologies.

NASA seeks highly innovative proposals that will complement its work in science and technologies that build upon and advance the Agency's unique safety-related research capabilities vital to aviation safety. Additional information is available at http://www.aeronautics.nasa.gov/programs_avsafe.htm.

A1.01 Mitigation of Aircraft Aging and Durability-Related Hazards
Lead Center: GRC
Participating Center(s): ARC, LaRC

The mitigation and management of aging and durability-related hazards in future civilian and military aircraft will require advanced materials, concepts, and techniques. NASA is engaged in the research of materials (metals, ceramics, and composites) and characterization/validation test techniques to mitigate aging and durability issues and to enable advanced material suitability and concepts.

Proposals are sought for the development of moisture-resistant resins and new surface treatments/primers. Novel chemistries are sought to improve the durability of aerospace adhesives with potential use on subsonic aircraft. This research opportunity is focused on the development of novel chemistries for coupling agents, surface treatments for adherends and their interfaces, leading to aerospace structural adhesives with improved durability. Work may involve chemical modification and testing of adhesives, coupling agents, surface treatments or combinations thereof and modeling to predict behavior and guide the synthetic approaches. Examples of adhesive characteristics to model and/or test may include, but are not limited to, hydrolytic stability of the interfacial chemistry, moisture permeability at the interface, and hydrophobicity of coupling agents and surface primers. Examples of adherends to model and/or test include carbon fiber/epoxy composites used in structural applications on subsonic aircraft, and aluminum, as well as their respective surface treatments. Additionally, proposals are sought for test techniques to fully characterize aging history and strain rate effects on thermoset and/or thermoplastic resins as well as on advanced composites manufactured of such resins and reinforced with 3D fiber preforms such as the triaxial braid used in advanced composite fan containment structures. Technology innovations may take the form of tools, models, algorithms, prototypes, and/or devices.

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• Probabilistic models are sought for improved structural analysis of complex metallic and composite airframe components. The methods used for these solutions need to detail the initiation and progression of damage to determine accurate estimates of residual life and/or strength of complex airframe structures.
  
• Tools and models are needed to predict the onset and rates of type-II hot corrosion attack in nickel-based turbine disk superalloys that allow for prolonged disk operation at high temperatures. Typically hot corrosion of turbine alloys is a product of molten salt exposure and is manifested by a localized pitting corrosion attack. Prolonged high temperature exposures of turbine disk alloys to sulfur-rich low temperature melting eutectic salts can lead to an onset of Type II hot corrosion attack causing serious degradation to the durability of the turbine components.
  
• Computational methods are sought to simulate of the response of advanced composite fan case/containment structures in aged conditions to jet engine fan blade-out events using impact mechanics and structural system dynamics modeling techniques.
  

• Low-cost, ground-based, vertical-pointing with potential scanning capability X-band radar that can operate unattended 24/7/365 and provide calibrated reflectivity and velocity data with hydrometer/cloud particle classification (based upon the reflectivity and velocity data).
  
• Low-cost, high-frequency (> 89 GHz) microwave or infrared radiometer technology capable of providing air temperature, water vapor, and liquid water measurements for both ground-based and airborne applications.
  

• Allow flightdeck systems to conform to individual operator's characteristics in a manner that improves performance, and that help characterize such individual differences;
  
• Improve our capability to non-intrusively sense and characterize operator and crew functional state in the ambient conditions of flight, or in flight simulation facilities;
  
• Convey operators state information to other intelligent agents (human and automated, proximal and remote) to improve coordinated performance;
  
• Modulate interactions among intelligent agents so as to minimize risk and optimize performance objectives across all possible mission scenarios;
  
• Intelligently aid operators such that the potential for and effects of human error are minimized, and so that operators can maintain appropriate functional states during flight operations; and/or
  
• Provide methods, metrics, and tools that help to assess the effectiveness of the above-mentioned technologies in human-in-the loop simulation and/or flight studies.
  

• Computational/modeling approaches to support determining appropriate human-automation function allocations with respect to safety and performance;
  
• Design tools and methods that improve the application of human-centered design principles to the design and certification of mixed human-automated systems;
  
• Tools and methods for modeling the complex information management systems required for future flight deck systems;
  
• Methods of data uncertainty estimation during the flight deck system design phase particularly as applied to predicting overall system integrity;
  
• Design and analysis methods or tools to better predict and assess human and system performance in relevant operational environments.
  

• Adaptive mathematical framework for control-centric onboard aircraft models that can accommodate real-time changes to subsystem dynamics;
  
• Real-time system identification capability for updating an onboard vehicle model with an adaptive structure to satisfy sub-system constraints under adverse conditions;
  
• Real-time fault diagnostic and prognostics capability needed in adaptive flight, propulsion, structural control applications;
  
• Real-time control power map identification with inclusion of aircraft sub-system constraints under adverse conditions;
  
• Real-time dynamic flight envelope identification and prediction capability; and
  
• Metrics and assessment models for safety-of-flight diagnostics and prognostics.

The object of this research topic is to develop innovative methodologies to determine probability of an engine system failure under emergency flight conditions that demand a boost in the engine performance, thus potentially sacrificing the engine, to increase the engine control effectiveness for a safe take-off or landing.

• Engine life prediction, including a reliability model for off-nominal conditions.
  
• Risk assessment and trade-off tool for emergency operation.
  

A primary goal of the NASA Aviation Safety Program is to develop technology for safe aircraft operation under different types of anomalies. These may occur in a variety of forms, including damaged surfaces or failed actuators that can limit the maneuverability and achievable flight envelope of the vehicle. As part of the Aviation Safety Program research, the goal of the Integrated Resilient Aircraft Control (IRAC) Project is to arrive at a set of validated multidisciplinary aircraft control design tools and techniques for enabling safe flight in the presence of adverse conditions. Research on advanced technical approaches includes adaptive flight control for providing stability, flight and maneuvering envelope identification for determining safe operability limits, and emergency flight planning and guidance for achieving a flyable path to an approach for landing.

This SBIR subtopic seeks innovations in providing flare planning and guidance technologies that aid aircraft during the critical phase of landing under damage conditions and weather disturbances such as heavy crosswind or wind shear. The research will develop feasibility studies of different methods for safe landing under these hazardous conditions when the aircraft performance is impaired due to damage and failures. The research will address automatic flare maneuvers of aircraft with a large crab angle and possibly bank angle for a stable trim approach, different flap deployment strategies, high speed approaches, and large trim alpha variations. Differential engine throttle may be used to compensate for large sideslip, as may other novel automatic flare methods for off-nominal landing. The research should also determine when a different approach profile (such as a lateral offset and/or shallower glide-slope) is desired, so that this information could be used by a flight planning system as a target endpoint.

• Analytical and data-driven technologies required to interpret the sensor data to enable the detection of fault and failure events;
  
• Methods to detect failures in software systems which have already undergone verification and validation;
  
• Methods to differentiate sensor failure from actual system or component failure;
  
• Characterizing, quantifying, and interpreting multi-sensor outputs;
  
• Integration of propulsion, airframe, and software health information for improved vehicle state-awareness;
  
• New sensors and sensory materials that operate in harsh environments; and
  
• New methods to provide better and more accurate information to diagnostic computational algorithms that reconstruct damage fields from sensor values.
  

The capability to identify faults and predict their progression is critical to determining appropriate mitigation actions to maintain aircraft safety. This effort is to develop innovative methods and tools for the diagnosis and prognosis of aircraft faults and failures. Proposals are sought for the development of a health management methodology which integrates a prognosis approach with the nature, severity, and uncertainty information from the diagnosis of the faulted system.

Diagnosis: The diagnosis element of IVHM includes the development of integrated technologies, tools, and techniques to determine the causal factors, nature, and severity of an adverse event and to distinguish that event from within a family of potential adverse events. These requirements go beyond standard fault isolation techniques. The emphasis is on the development of mathematically rigorous diagnostic technologies that are applicable to structures, propulsion gas path monitoring, software, and other subsystems within the aircraft. Technologies developed must be able to perform diagnosis given heterogeneous and asynchronous signals coming from the health management components of the vehicle and integrating information from each of these components.

The ability to actively query health management systems, use advanced decision making techniques to perform the diagnosis, and then assess the severity using these techniques are critical. As an example, the mathematical rigor of the diagnosis and severity assessment could be treated through a Bayesian methodology since it allows for characterization and propagation of uncertainties through models of aircraft failure and degradation.

Computational demonstrations using realistic data or prototype hardware implementations of the diagnostic capabilities would be expected at the conclusion of a Phase 2 effort. Other methods could also be employed that appropriately model the uncertainties in the subsystem due to noise and other sources of uncertainty. The ability to actively query the underlying health management systems (whether they are related to detection or not) is critical to reducing the uncertainty in the diagnosis. As an example, if there is ambiguity in the diagnosis about the type and location of a particular failure in the aircraft structure, the diagnostic engine should be able to actively query that system or related systems to determine the true location and severity of the anomaly. Where possible, a rigorous mathematical framework should be employed to provide a rank ordered list of diagnoses, an assessment of the severity of each diagnosed event, along with a measure of the certainty in the diagnosis. Understanding and addressing the system integration and validation issues are critical components of this effort.

Prognosis: The prognosis element of IVHM includes the development of technologies, tools, and techniques to determine, given information from detection and diagnosis health management systems and other systems, estimates (with a measure of confidence) of the remaining useful life (RUL) of candidate faults generated by diagnostic engines. The assessment of the RUL could be used by other aircraft systems to place additional restrictions, such as a new operating envelope on the flight control systems. Areas of interest include developing methods for making predictions of RUL which take the uncertainties provided by a candidate diagnostic engine into account, representing and managing uncertainties inherent in such predictions, and developing and applying assessment methodologies for comprehensive and objective evaluation of prognostic algorithm performance.

Research should be conducted to demonstrate technical feasibility during Phase 1 and to show a path toward a Phase 2 technology demonstration. Proposals are solicited that address aspects of the following areas:

• The development of an integrated approach for diagnostics and prognostics that demonstrate a mathematically rigorous method for propagating diagnostic uncertainty and its effect on subsequent estimates of remaining useful life.
• Physics-based damage propagation models for one or more relevant aircraft subsystems such as composite or metallic airframe structures, engine turbo-machinery and hot structures, avionics, electrical power systems, electromechanical systems, and electronics. Proposals that focus on technologies envisioned for next generation aircraft are strongly encouraged.
• Novel approaches to assess the quality and accuracy of remaining useful life estimates through the fusion of different models, active probing of components, etc.
• Uncertainty representation and management methods. Proposers are encouraged to consider uncertainties due to measurement noise, imperfect models and algorithms, as well as uncertainties stemming from future anticipated loads and environmental conditions.
• Mathematically rigorous methodologies for assessing the quality of remaining useful life predictions and associated uncertainties.
• Verification and validation methods for prognostic algorithms.
  

This topic is jointly supported by the Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) project and the Aircraft Aging and Durability (AAD) project.

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