Browse Topic: Hardware
Low-level flight, defined by high-speed operations near terrain, represents a significant challenge in military rotorcraft missions while providing strategic advantages, such as radar evasion and heightened surprise. Recent conflicts highlight the urgent need for advanced low-level flight capabilities in the design of new rotorcraft. The close proximity to ground obstacles, combined with the complexities of piloting, necessitates precise control and robust handling qualities to prevent accidents. However, existing handling quality standards, such as MIL-DTL-32742, reveal limitations in assessing low-level maneuvers. Given the diverse array of new rotorcraft designs, driven by initiatives like the U.S. Army's Future Vertical Lift and NATO's Next Generation Rotorcraft Capabilities, a customized handling qualities evaluation for each design is impractical. In response, a performance-driven strategy has been implemented, scaling Mission Task Elements to align with aircraft performance
This paper will present the use of a licensed open-source software application based on commercially available off-the-shelf hardware for the control and data acquisition of aerospace system integration test rigs. System integration test rigs are complex systems requiring real-time deterministic control and high-speed data acquisition. Various aircraft flight systems and subsystems can be tested to see if they interact as they would on the aircraft without an airframe. These systems are critical to ensure interoperability during the development phase and facilitate the interchangeability of actual flight hardware, prototypes, and simulation models throughout the development cycle. Deploying open, flexible, and highly configurable real-time control and data acquisition systems ensures that development milestones will be achieved cost-effectively, whether using actual flight hardware or working with a simulation. This is because, as the prototype hardware is developed, the remaining
Along with unique and challenging development concerns, target hardware deployment concerns exist for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications. Those deployment concerns should be addressed in the planning phase and consist of the issues surrounding the target hardware selection and the certifiability/qualifiable of the target hardware for the AI/ML model deployment. These concerns center around certification issues identified for multi-core processors (MCP), where those MCP issues are amplified for graphics processor units (GPUs) when they are used for general computing. While the use of complex graphics processors for general computing is being reconciled for flight critical applications, the reduction of these concerns is possible through design specific target hardware choices, e.g., selection of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices or other certifiable approaches. This paper explores these concerns and proposes design specific target hardware
Modern aircraft have an established need for a high-performance, open standards solution to interconnect increasing number of digital components including sensors, actuators, controllers, processors, displays and data concentrators. The aircraft can be envisioned as a distributed system requiring highly available, reliable, and deterministic communication network - often termed as digital backbone - for safe operation. This paper introduces a new zonal architecture for aerospace onboard networks using Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN). TSN is an open standard based deterministic Ethernet solution for mission and safety critical networks in aerospace industry that truly meets the Modular Open Standards Approach (MOSA) requirements. This paper also presents a reference implementation of the proposed digital backbone architecture using commercial-off-the-shelf hardware from multiple vendors. Experimental data from laboratory evaluation shows stability, performance, and reliability that
Helicopter aircrew are exposed to high levels of whole-body vibration (WBV) in fight operations, which may degrade their ride comfort and performance in the short-term, and contribute to some health issues in the long-term. This paper presents the latest development and flight test demonstration results of an active seat mount system that is designed to reduce helicopter aircrew WBV levels through active cancellation of the N/rev vibration peaks related to the helicopter main rotor speed. A prototype airworthy hardware of the active seat mount system has been developed based on previous bench-top-test designs to meet airframe integrity requirements for installation and flight testing on the Bell-412 helicopter. Extensive experimental results on human occupants using a shaker table facility and flight demonstrations on the NRC Bell-412 helicopter in representative flight conditions are presented and discussed. The active seat mount system has achieved significant reduction to the
Deos includes an industry standard lightweight TCP/IP stack (LwIP) with a DAL-A sockets library so it can provide data transport during in flight or on ground as part of its standard package. While it may have high data integrity (e.g., through CRC or other such mechanisms), TCP/IP over Ethernet is a non-deterministic protocol. As such, it is not suitable for avionics applications that require determinism or high robustness. In contrast, there are several are several redundant and deterministic data network technologies such as ARINC-664/AFDX, time triggered ethernet (TTE), and time sensitive networking (TSN). These interfaces are based on switched Ethernet technologies and can include system redundancy such that they are applicable for aircraft data network applications. Their feature set enables them to be used as a digital backbone for aircraft control and other applications where both integrity and availability are essential. Each of these solutions generally requires specific end
A new measurement capability was created by combining photogrammetry and metrology techniques to accurately measure one half of the XV-15 Tilt Rotor Research Aircraft at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy museum. The challenges imposed by the fuselage and surrounding environment at Udvar-Hazy were overcome by careful application of photogrammetry and metrology techniques. Data analyses and processing included the use of multiple reverse engineering programs to accurately generate a complete 3-dimensional water-tight geometry of the aircraft and rotor blade. This paper describes the photogrammetry and metrology measurement systems, technology and hardware set-up, data analysis and processing methods, future work, and lessons learned. In addition, selected measurement results of the fuselage and rotor blade are presented.
A pilot-in-the-loop simulation environment aimed at increasing pilot visual cues without the need of expensive visualization hardware is presented. The proposed solution relies on Virtual Reality (VR) to enhance the pilot immersion in the simulated environment. The project is integrated in the development of the complete simulation framework FRAME-Sim, focused on simulating rotorcraft in early conceptual design stages, and therefore relying on physics-based multibody simulation of the rotorcraft flight dynamics and free/open source software. FRAME-Sim visual environments that are being used include products available to the market as well as homemade solutions developed to obtain the highest level of versatility during the simulation.
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