Browse Topic: Safety regulations and standards
The Primary Author has been involved in Army Aviation Development and Acquisition since the Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft System (UTTAS), Advanced Attack Helicopter (AAH), Army Helicopter Improvement Program (AHIP), and Light Helicopter Experimental (LHX) Programs in the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. The first three of these programs successfully made it to production aircraft, while the LHX became the RAH-66 Comanche and was canceled primarily due to technical problems and cost overruns. The initiation of the next phase by the Army Aviation Development (ADD) Directorate for Future Vertical Lift (FVL) did not occur until the beginning of the 2015-2000 timeframe. This was 35 years since the last Army Aviation Development in 1980. To help sustain this FVL development, the Primary Author led, oversaw, and helped conduct a program through the National Rotorcraft Technology Center (NRTC) in the 2015-2016 timeframe. It was called the Development Assurance Value-Based Acquisition (DAVBA) Program1. It included the following team members: Georgia Tech, University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH), Dassault Systèmes, and Clausewitz Technology. The Army ADD plan funded it for FY2015- 2016 through the NRTC. The objectives were to provide the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) Program with a Development Assurance for Airworthiness Qualification and a Value-Based Acquisition Overall Evaluation Criterion (OEC) for FARA and FLRAA concepts.. However, Army Aviation only funded the first phase in 2015, as FVL funds were then transferred to the new Army Futures Command. This paper will illustrate how DAVBA could have saved the Future Attack and Reconnaissance Aircraft Program (FARA) Program as well as providing a more cost effective Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) Program.
To this point in aviation history, a typical aircraft type certification program has focused on the constituent systems that make up the aircraft, decomposing them further and further down until reaching their elemental parts and how they interact. This approach has traditionally treated the actual communication technology as only an interface, with technology and implementation based on a decision between multiple stakeholders via an ICD and high-level requirements. This has been necessary to ensure the accurate and on-time delivery of safety-critical data between nodes. When using legacy point-to-point or bus-based data communication technologies like ARINC 429 or MIL-STD-1553, this approach has worked well enough as these technologies are relatively straightforward and proven technologies. However, as onboard bandwidth needs for safety-critical data increase, these legacy technologies are increasingly no longer capable of meeting the needs of system integrators. Ubiquitous, high-bandwidth Ethernet is the obvious solution to these needs and, indeed, it has been used for quite some time in onboard networking applications for low Development Assurance Level (DAL)/non-safety critical data. However, as Ethernet moves into high-DAL applications, the certification of the Ethernet network itself becomes a major complexity that must be addressed directly.
In the early days of quality management, prior to 1980s, the focus seemed to be on "Quality Control" or "Quality Assurance". Emphasis was placed on inspection and testing. Quality was about conformance to specification. Non-Conformance Reports were representative of quality control. Our understanding of quality management has evolved, largely based on the Toyota Quality and Concurrent Engineering Approach of moving it off the production line for Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD) [1]. In the late 1980s industry experienced similar difficulties in understanding and adopting quality management. The ideas behind managing quality are quite abstract. Quality is primarily about understanding and satisfying a customer's expectations. This includes implicit expectations, as well as explicit expectations. The techniques of specification, inspection and testing only make sense in that wider context. Formal risk management was developed in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Risk management principles are now widely understood and applied. Functional Safety Management (FSM) simply applies quality management to systems that are designed to control risk. [2] The standards for FSM and Development Assurance (DA) are relatively new. SAE ARP 4754 and ARP 4761 for complex aircraft systems were introduced in 1996 and DO-178 for software in 1998. In 2010 ARP 4754A [3] was created for movement from federated avionics systems to distributed integrated avionics systems which set the stage for Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) in DO 297 [4]. The Army identified IMA as a critical technology in its Joint Common Architecture (JCA) Final Report [5] and is seeking to provide a Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) approach to its Future Vertical Lift (FVL) programs. [6] The aim is to build and upgrade FVL mission systems without expensive proprietary interfaces. New capabilities from a choice of developers will adapt to emerging threats. The mission system architecture demonstration (MSAD) Program has awarded six contracts to avionics vendors to develop MOSA tools and rules. A capstone demonstration wraps-up this December 2020 and will generate a final report and provide guidance for Future Attack and Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), FLRAA and FUAS architectures. MOSA flexibility and economy come to legacy helicopters with the Aviation Mission Common Server (AMCS), which transitions the legacy fleet from single-purpose/single-vendor architectures to more adaptable modules and components. Nonproprietary, government-controlled, open system standards interface new software applications without going to each platform maker for integration. [6] This paper will review FSM, DA, and Open IMA in these civil aircraft standards, compare them with Army Aviation's current Army Military Airworthiness Certification Criteria (AMACC) [7] and recommend a Civil Military FSM DA Framework for FVL and on how AMACC could be modified for FVL Open Systems Architectures (OSA) Certification using a Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA). [8]
Australia has embarked on an extraordinary reform to design, develop and implement a new and contemporary Defence Aviation Safety Framework. The program seeks to establish a single Defence Aviation Safety Authority (DASA) and issue a comprehensive and integrated suite of Defence Aviation Safety Regulation (DASR) for initial and continuing airworthiness, flight operations, air navigation, aerodromes (inclusive of ship-borne heliports) and safety management systems. While reforms of this scale can often be triggered by reviews into major aircraft accidents, such as The Nimrod Review by Charles Haddon-Cave QC in October 2009, Australia initiated the reform when new aircraft fleets were being introduced and at a time of arguably high-levels of aviation safety. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explain the compelling reason for change; providing a twenty-five-year retrospective analysis of Australia’s previous Defence aviation safety framework to give a rich picture of the difficulties faced by increased commercialization from the late 1990s, globalization in the 2000s, and the recent emergence of strict work, health and safety legislation in Australia.
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