National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Small Business Innovation Research 2001 Program Solicitation

TOPIC A1 Aviation Safety

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A1.01 Flight Deck Situation Awareness and Crew Systems Technologies
A1.02 Propulsion and Airframe Failure Data and Accident Mitigation
A1.03 Automated On-Line Health Management and Data Analysis
A1.04 Aircraft Icing Systems
A1.05 Non-destructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring of Structures and Materials

NASA is responsible for conducting the research that, upon implementation, will contribute to an 80 percent reduction in aviation accidents by 2007, and a 90 percent reduction in aviation accidents by 2017 relative to 1997. Accomplishment of these goals requires technical advances in the following areas: (1) Increased safety for all aircraft flying in an atmospheric icing environment; (2) Prevention and/or mitigation of hazardous conditions during or after an aviation accident; (3) Enhanced flight deck situational awareness for the National Airspace System operators; (4) Automated on-line health management and data analysis for aircraft systems; (5) Innovative and commercially viable techniques for non-destructive evaluation and health monitoring of aircraft materials and structures.

A1.01 Flight Deck Situation Awareness and Crew Systems Technologies
Lead Center: LaRC
Participating Center(s): None

Information technology has and will continue to provide operational opportunities toward increasing the safe and efficient use of the Airspace System. Significant challenges associated with this evolving technology include maintaining or enhancing the situation awareness of system operators, developing user-centered technologies that facilitate human perception and interpretation and that counteract human information processing limitations and biases, and allowing for geographically and temporally distributed operators to work collaboratively.

NASA seeks highly innovative crew systems technologies that will maintain or enhance situation awareness and aid operator decision-making for improved aerospace safety and efficiency. These technologies and methods may take the form of tools, models, techniques, procedures, substantiated guidelines, prototypes, and devices. In addition, we seek tools and methods for measuring and analyzing human and group performance in complex, dynamic systems. Innovative and economically attractive approaches are sought to advance the current state-of-the-art in the following areas:

• Systems monitoring with sensitive informing, advisements, alerts, and aids for Airspace System operators that enhance situation awareness and improve aviation safety.
• Crew-centered systems design methods and technologies.
• Innovative crew-system interface technologies.
• Human-error reduction in aircraft operations and systems monitoring.
• Error tolerant flight deck systems including advanced displays, crew-system interfaces, and monitoring technologies.
• Human and group performance analysis methods and tools.
• Human performance measurement technologies for use in operational environments.
• Collaborative and distributive decision making among Airspace System operators.
• Integrated flight deck information systems and procedures.
• Decision support technologies and methods to assist Airspace System operators that enhance situation awareness and improve aviation safety.
• Artificial Intelligence technologies and concepts that monitor crew and aircraft performance to ensure appropriate levels of engagement, crew workload and situation awareness.
• Human-centered information technologies that enhance situation awareness and performance of less experienced Airspace System operators especially at critical times.
• Development of human-centered information technology for intuitive guidance queues in advanced concepts.
• Guidelines and measurement techniques that allow for successful assessment of the application of human-centered design principles to flight deck display concepts.
  

A1.02 Propulsion and Airframe Failure Data and Accident Mitigation
Lead Center: GRC
Participating Center(s): LaRC

NASA is concerned with the prevention of hazardous and accident conditions and the mitigation of their effects when they do occur. One particular emphasis is on fire. The prevention, detection, and suppression of fires are critical goals of accident mitigation. Aircraft fires represent a small number of actual accidents, but the number of fatalities due to in-flight, post-crash and on-ground fires is large.

A second emphasis is on crashworthiness. For all transport aircraft accidents, 45 percent of those which involve serious injuries or fatalities are survivable. Besides impact alone, survivability is often a function of the combined effects of subsequent fire and smoke. Technology is needed to further protect passengers from the effects of the crash or mitigate the after effects to allow the escape of passengers.

A third emphasis is on mitigating the safety risk and collateral damage due to unexpected failures of rotating components. Although the FAA mandates a blade containment and rotor unbalance requirement (FAR Part 33, section 33.94) as part of the airworthiness standards for (turbine) aircraft engines, there are substantial potential (aircraft-engine) system benefits to be gained by enabling safety assured, lighter weight, lower cost, and more damage tolerant designs for engine case/containment systems and associated (primary load path) structures.

A final emphasis for this Solicitation is on propulsion system health management in order to prevent or accommodate safety-significant malfunctions. Past advances in this area have helped improve the reliability and safety of aircraft propulsion systems. However, propulsion system component failures are still a contributing factor in numerous aircraft accidents and incidents. Advances in instrumentation, health monitoring algorithms, and fault accommodating logic are sought which help to further reduce the occurrence of and/or mitigate the effects of safety-significant propulsion system malfunctions.

With these four emphases in mind, products and technologies are sought to mitigate or prevent relevant accidents, to enhance human survivability in the event of an accident, and to monitor system health. Considerations should be made for affordability and retrofitability to the commercial transport, general aviation, and rotorcraft fleets. These include the following areas:

• Technology for fire prevention, detection, and suppression of potential in-flight fires in fuel tanks, insulation, cargo compartments, and other inaccessible locations.
• Technology to provide fuel tank vapor flammability reduction and onboard oxygen generation.
• Technology to minimize fire hazards in crashes and to prevent or delay fires. For example: fuel-system modifications to eliminate spills, and on-demand suppression while not presenting a weight or performance penalty.
• Design and injury criteria and dynamic analyses to enhance crash safety.
• Systems approach to crashworthy designs, which may include validated occupant/seat/structural interaction analyses.
• Energy-absorbing seat and structural concepts and materials.
• Technology for occupant protection in a crash, including advanced restraints and supplemental restraints.
• Advanced material/structural configuration concepts to prevent catastrophic failures of engine components, or to ensure fragment containment.
• Computational tools for analyzing blade-loss events and designing structural components/systems accordingly.
• Health management technologies such as advanced instrumentation, health monitoring algorithms, and fault accommodating logic, to predict, diagnose, and prevent safety significant propulsion system malfunctions.
• Low cost methods for failure prediction and testing of any of the above aircraft failure-prevention and mitigation technologies.
• Methods for integrating any of the above aircraft failure-prevention and mitigation technologies into existing or new aircraft.
  

A1.03 Automated On-Line Health Management and Data Analysis
Lead Center: DFRC
Participating Center(s): None

On-line health monitoring is a critical technology for improving transportation safety in the 21st century. Safe, affordable, and more efficient operation of aerospace vehicles requires advances in online health monitoring of vehicle subsystems and information monitoring from many sources over local/wide area networks. On-line health monitoring is a general concept involving signal-processing algorithms designed to support decisions related to safety, maintenance, or operating procedures. The concept of on-line emphasizes algorithms that minimize the time between data acquisition and decision-making.

This subtopic seeks solutions for on-line aircraft subsystem health monitoring. Solutions should exploit multiple computers communicating over standard networks where applicable. Solutions can be designed to monitor a specific subsystem or a number of systems simultaneously.

Resulting commercial products might be implemented in a distributed decision-making environment such as a virtual flight research center, a disciplinary-specific collaborative laboratory, an onboard diagnostics system, or a maintenance and inspection network of potentially global proportion.
Proposers should discuss who the users of resulting products would be, e.g., research/test/ development; manufacturing; maintenance depots; flight crew; airports; flight operations or mission control; air traffic management; or airlines. Proposers are encouraged to discuss data acquisition, processing, and presentation components in their proposal. Examples of desired solutions targeted by this subtopic include:

• Real-time autonomous sensor validity monitors
• Flight control system or flight path diagnostics for predicting loss of control
• Automated testing and diagnostics of mission-critical avionics
• Structural fatigue, life cycle, static, or dynamic load monitors
• Automated nondestructive evaluation for faulty structural components
• Electrical system monitoring and fire prevention
• Applications that exploit wireless communication technology to reduce costs
• Model-reference or model-updating schemes based on measured data that operate autonomously
• Proactive maintenance schedules for rocket or turbine engines, including engine life-cycle monitors
• Predicting or detecting any equipment malfunction
• Middleware or software toolkits to lower the cost of developing on-line health-monitoring applications
• Innovative solutions for harvesting, managing, archival, and retrieval of aerospace vehicle health data
  

A1.04 Aircraft Icing Systems
Lead Center: GRC
Participating Center(s): None

A major goal of the NASA Aircraft Icing Program is to increase the level of safety for all aircraft flying in the atmospheric icing environment. To maximize the level of safety, aircraft must be capable of handling all possible icing conditions by either avoiding or tolerating the conditions. Proposals are invited that lead to innovative new approaches or significant improvements in existing technologies for inflight icing condition avoidance (icing weather information systems) or tolerance (aircraft icing protection systems and design tools). Of particular interest are technologies that are compatible with emerging aircraft designs (i.e., sensitive electronic systems, digital flight decks, and advanced wing designs). Onboard systems must be aerodynamically non-intrusive , practical, and must consider weight, power, size, and cost for successful integration into aircraft. To receive consideration for funding, all proposals submitted under this subtopic must demonstrate significant advantages over existing technologies. The areas of greatest interest are:

• New practical, inflight and/or ground-based, real-time remote sensing technologies for the measurement of the supercooled water droplet and temperature environment. The technology must be capable of quantifying the environment to allow for the prediction of the severity of airframe icing, and to identify potential avoidance and escape routes, and must have practical range (at least 20 km) and cloud penetration capability. The scanning update cycle rate needs to be on the order of 1 minute to account for rapid changes in the icing environment. Remote measurement systems must be capable of quantifying liquid water in both pure liquid clouds and those with ice crystals.
• Dual or multi-band radar analysis techniques that can function in the Mie scattering regime for the remote measurement of icing conditions.
• Radome technology for microwave wavelength radar and radiometers that remains completely clear of liquid water in all weather situations.
• In situ icing environment measurement systems that can provide practical, very low cost validation data for emerging icing weather information systems and atmospheric modeling. Measured information must include location, altitude, cloud liquid water content, temperature, and ideally cloud particle sizing and phase information. Possible solutions include multiple aircraft sampling and radiosonde based systems.
• Low power and low cost anti-icing systems, including technologies that protect composite structures. A system must be capable of operating under all potential environmental conditions and should be capable of operating automatically or with minimal cockpit crew interaction.
• Practical analysis tools for the integrated design and optimization of hot gas ice protection systems. The tool must model the entire heat path from source to protected surface, including the conduction path through the surface and the water loading on the external surface.
  

A1.05 Non-destructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring of Structures and Materials
Lead Center: LaRC
Participating Center(s): ARC

Innovative and commercially viable technologies are being solicited for the development of non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and health-monitoring sensors and instrumentation. Concepts in computational models for signal processing and data interpretation to establish quantitative characterization and event determination are also of interest. Evaluation technologies may incorporate ultrasonics, laser ultrasonics, optics and fiber optics, shearography, video optics and metrology, thermography, electromagnetics, acoustic emission, X-ray, management of digital NDE data, biomimetic, and nano-scale sensing approaches for structural health monitoring. There is additional specific interest in non-contacting, remote, rapid, and less geometry sensitive technologies that reduce acquisition costs or improve system sensitivity, stability, and operational costs. Advancements in integrated multi-functional sensor systems, autonomous inspection approaches, distributed/embedded sensors, roaming inspectors, and shape adaptive sensors are also specifically sought.

Technologies may be applied to:

• Adhesives, sealants, bearings, coatings, glasses, alloys, laminates, monolithics, material blends, and weldments
• Thermal protection systems
• Complex composite and hybrid structural systems
• Low density and high temperature materials

Technologies may be used for:

• Characterizing material properties
• Assessing effects of defects in materials and structures
• Evaluation of mass-loss in materials
• Detecting cracks, porosity, foreign material, inclusions, corrosion, disbonds
• Detecting cracks under bolts
• Real time and in situ monitoring, reporting, and accumulated damage characterization for structural durability and life prediction/determination
• Repair certification
• Environmental sensing
• Electronic system/wiring integrity assessment
• Characterization of load environment on a variety of structural materials and geometries including thermal protection systems and bonded configurations
• Identification of loads exceeding design
• Monitoring loads for fatigue and preventing overloads
• Suppression of acoustic loads
• Early detection of damage
• In situ monitoring and control of materials processing

The anticipated structural applications to be considered for NDE and health monitoring development include a variety of high stress and hostile aero-thermo-chemical service environments projected for aerospace systems.

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