Browse Topic: Productivity
In this paper, we describe an innovative V&V approach using the SCADE product, enabling significant reduction of effort while preserving compliance with DO-178C/DO-331. This new approach relies on a unique capability: automatic generation of Low-Level Tests. Details about savings will be provided to show how we can reduce costs, speed up certifications, and bring products to the market faster. We will conclude by summarizing the actual benefits and describing ongoing work to bring other savings in the future.
Since certifying the Bell 505 in December 2016, customers on six continents have received delivery of 250 of these light, single-engine aircraft. In three years the worldwide fleet logged more than 35,000 flight-hours, a testament to the Bell 505's customer experience - not only with the aircraft, but with delivery and service. In getting to the 250th delivery, the paper discusses the efforts taken to meet market demand, provide custom finishing, offer kit integration, and even take on additional envelope expansion. Numerous configurations and kits were made available a short time after initial certification, allowing Bell 505 customers to take full advantage of the aircraft capability in a timely manner. The challenges of meeting market demand and transitioning from low rate production to full rate production requires a team effort and this paper shows how it was done for the 505.
ABSTRACT The development of Bell's third-generation tiltrotor, the V-280, places great focus on achieving low cost and robust design simplicity and is demonstrated on the Joint Multi-Role (JMR) Air Vehicle Concept Demonstrator (AVCD). The design and manufacture of the V-280 AVCD wing structure is an example that achieves significant recurring and development cost savings through the infusion of Design for Manufacturing (DFM) principles, advanced materials, robust manufacturing processes, and low-cost developmental tooling. To drive simplicity through all aspects of the design, the V-280 AVCD wing employs a straight, constant section profile with no forward sweep or upward dihedral. Wing skins, spars, and ribs utilize a broad goods layup technique that favors large fabric ply shapes over highly tailored tape plies. This approach has yielded significant reduction in fabrication labor hours (via increased composite material application rates) and has resulted in reduced scrap material. Mechanical assembly hours are also reduced through use of room-temperature paste bonded structure as well as large scale use of determinant assembly methods. Multiple risk reduction test articles, produced concurrently with the design effort, helped to inform and validate the producibility and structural integrity of the final design configuration. New production methods applied to the V-280 demonstrator wing have yielded a projected 57% reduction in total labor hours and a 50% reduction in development tool costs. At the same time, a minimal capital investment profile is supporting the potential production rates necessary for a Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program of record.
This paper presents the results of the three and a half year Adaptive Vehicle Management System (AVMS) Phase II program, which developed a suite of technologies designed to exploit the large amount of information available across the subsystems of a modern rotorcraft and flight tested them on three platforms, an H-6 flying technology demonstrator, an H-47 Chinook and an AH-64 Apache. Technologies developed included those in the areas of tactile-cueing based carefree maneuvering, tactile cueing for maneuver and mission aiding, active external load stabilization, rotor state sensing, and alternative redundancy methods. The AVMS program expands on most other flight controls research by demonstrating a VMS that can simultaneously optimize multiple metrics including not only handling qualities but also aircraft performance, mission productivity, safety, and operating and sustainment (O&S) costs. The flight test results show benefits to mission productivity as demonstrated by an average of 19% improvement in the time to complete a range of mission task elements, along with a 34% improvement in workload, significant improvement in performance, and almost a 1 Cooper-Harper Point Rating (CHPR) improvement in handling qualities. In addition, the AVMS technologies were shown to prevent inadvertent exceedances of operating and safety limits, thereby saving a projected average of $50,000 per aircraft per year for a typical advanced capability military rotorcraft. The results substantiate our hypothesis that these technologies will make a significant positive impact on the effective and efficient operation of modern rotorcraft.
The three and a half year Adaptive Vehicle Management System (AVMS) Phase II program developed technologies in the areas of tactile-cueing based carefree maneuvering, maneuver aiding, and mission aiding. It also flight tested these technologies on three platforms, an H-6 Little Bird technology demonstrator, MH-47G Chinook, and AH-64 Apache. This paper focuses primarily on the results from testing the AVMS technologies on the AH-64 Apache helicopter. In summary, the results show a significant improvement in mission productivity, workload, performance, and handling qualities. These results substantiate the hypothesis that the AVMS technologies provide significant, positive impacts on attack helicopter platforms and it proves AVMS technologies can improve multiple metrics simultaneously without the expense of impacting the other metrics.
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