Aerospace Control and Guidance Systems Committee

Announcements

You must first log in to access prior meeting presentations, register for a meeting, or nominate some for the Ward Award.

If you do not have a login account, or cannot remember the email address associated with your account, please click on the Application Form link below.

Login

Site Search

Search our site:

Upcoming Events

Photos

Meeting Highlights New!

Subcommittee S

Prior Meetings

Abstracts may be viewed by anyone. Presentations are only available to active members who have logged in.

Meeting 132
(coming soon)

Home

Ward Memorial Award

Planning Advisory Board

Downloads

Constitution and By-Laws

About

History

Contact Us

← Return to agenda

Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 94 - Reno - November 2004
Agenda Location	4 GENERAL COMMITTEE TECHNICAL SESSION 4.1 Government Agencies Summary Reports 4.1.2 NASA 4.1.2.2 NASA Langley
Title	NASA Langley
Presenter	Christine Belcastro
Available Downloads*	presentation video
	Downloads are available to members who are logged in and either Active* or attended this meeting.
Abstract	A goal of the NASA Aviation Safety and Security Program (AvSSP) is to reduce the fatal aircraft accident rate by 80 percent in 10 years, and by 90 percent in 25 years. The AvSSP covers all commercial vehicle classes (i.e., large transports, general aviation, and rotorcraft), and is a partnership that includes NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the aviation industry, and the Department of Defense. Technologies being developed under the Single Aircraft Accident Prevention (SAAP) Project, focus on the reduction of aircraft accidents resulting from loss of vehicle control as well as failures. Loss of control is among the highest accident categories across all vehicle classes for both the number of accidents and the number of fatalities. Although many loss-of-control accidents include system or component failures as a primary or secondary causal factor, aircraft accidents due to failures have also resulted in a significant number of fatal accidents that can be listed as a separate category. Technologies being developed under SAAP focus on preventing aircraft system failures, detecting and identifying failures that do occur, and providing enhanced guidance and control capability to prevent and recover from vehicle loss of control (or upset). A key challenge of implementing these technologies into the aircraft fleet (both for retrofit and forward-fit) is the validation and certification of these highly complex integrated and adaptive systems. The validation process under development for SAAP technologies is an integrated approach involving analytical, simulation-based, and experimental methods. A subscale aircraft flight test capability, the Airborne Subscale Transport Aircraft Research (AirSTAR) testbed, is being developed at NASA Langley for conducting high-risk flight tests as part of this validation process. This flight test capability will enable experimental research in upset conditions that would be infeasible on a full-scale manned vehicle. The capability comprises a series of flying sub-scale models, associated ground-support equipment, and a remote test station at Langley. The AirSTAR testbed is being developed for validating vehicle dynamics models for high risk/upset flight maneuvers, as well as control reconfiguration and upset recovery algorithms. This concept involves wind tunnel testing, the development of a six Degree of Freedom (DOF) simulation which utilizes improved data and mathematical models from the wind tunnel tests to characterize vehicle dynamics beyond normal operation, and extensive simulation testing prior to subscale flight testing. The SAE presentation provided additional details about various aspects of the AirSTAR Testbed, including the dynamically scaled transport aircraft, the pilot training effort, and the ground station development.