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The airspeed increases which appear on all flight data recorders of aircraft which crashed in microburst wind shears are examined. Two reasons for these airspeed increases are suggested which contradict previous analysis.

Nowadays, pedestrian kinematics after vehicle impacts can be observed from the accident videos that have been recorded by road monitoring and driver recorders. This study was aimed at investigating the pedestrian landing mechanisms and analyzing the influencing factors.

The analysis is carried out for the flight test data gathered and stored in a Crash Data Recorder (CDR). The data signals obtained from CDR are generally highly noisy, with frequent data drop outs and also with low sampling rate.

Available flight recorder data are used to tune the model and reconstruct the accident. Then the model is used for in-depth examination of the accident’s “neighborhood” in autonomous “what-if” simulation experiments under actual and hypothetical conditions.

Transient human thermal response characteristics are investigated using two US Army experimental datasets as part of an on-going study to model thermal risk for the warfighter. This paper reports two black box models developed as initial steps to understand the effect of individual differences on transient thermal response and risk. In the first black box model, two transient climatic parameters and six individual characteristics are used as inputs to predict 12 thermal responses including two psychophysical outputs (temperature sensation magnitude, Tsens, and comfort vote, Disc) using experimental data from 35 subjects. For the second black box model, additional individual characteristics are used to model Tcore, Tskin, and the time limit for the individual tolerance to heat stress with heavy clothing, using data from 22 subjects. The insights developed using these component models will be used to develop a decision making framework to predict thermal risk for the warfighter.

The main objective of testing is to evaluate the functionality, reliability, and operational safety of products. However, this objective makes testing a complex and expensive stage in the development process. From the perspective of an aircraft OEM, test cases are used to verify integration, system, and application levels. Therefore, test cases certify the products against the requirements using the black box testing approach. In doing so, a test plan defines a sequence of test cases whereby it sets up the environment, stimulates the fault, and then observes the system under test (SUT) for each case. Subsequently, the postprocessing of the test execution classifies the test plan as passed or failed. The ongoing digitization and interconnectedness between aircraft systems increase the complexity in functional testing. This trend leads to a high number of test cases and a multitude of reasons why a specific test-case fails.

Oceaneering has developed a highly reliable contact physics simulation system called Modular Integrated Machine-human Interaction Control (MIMIC) in support of the ultra-deepwater oil and gas industry. This paper provides an overview of MIMIC as it is used offshore, explains Oceaneering's use of the simulation tool to validate requirement-driven design concepts in complex ultra-deepwater operations, and describes how a similar system could be used to validate space exploration designs and operational scenarios. There are many program phases from ultra-deepwater projects that are analogous to space exploration. Conceptual design, tooling and system design validation, and worksite design validation are required in both applications. Comparable specialized engineering support and virtual system integrated testing is conceivable, and operations planning can draw on experience from subsea projects.

The business jet industry is in the midst of a prolific avionics revolution which, if not properly integrated, will soon result in a semi-crisis of having used up all the panel space, all black box space, lowered reliability, and increased weight. It can be alleviated if our industry joins together to plan for its advent.

A series of thermal analyses and tests have been conducted on several avionic enclosures, or “black boxes”, with the enclosure designs being representative of those covered under a new Air Force standard. As a part of this effort, the thermal characteristics of various state-of-the-art hardware elements were investigated, including their effect on overall enclosure thermal performance. Using this data, analyses and tests were then carried out on complete enclosures, with the results indicating that power levels up to 1 watt/in3 could be achieved without exceeding device junction temperature limits.

Electro-Pneumatic systems exhibit highly nonlinear characteristics due to air compressibility, the presence of friction and the nonlinearities of control valves. Monitoring by acquiring the system's transfer function accurately can be difficult for nonlinear systems. This paper outlines a new idea that one can deal with the electro-pneumatic system as a black box, and using a multivariate technique called principal component analysis (PCA) and projection to latent structure discriminant analysis (PLSDA) to provide robust information about the system's condition. The monitoring system has been experimentally validated for an electro-pneumatic printing machine system using vibration, pressure and displacement sensory data integration using PCA-PLSDA algorithm. Experiments were conducted under two pressures for three artificially conditions: normal, throttled, and leaking system.

This paper presents a model-based design and verification approach, which is used to develop a complex state-based fuel cell control system. The architecture of the control system is organized in a hierarchical manner with one supervisory controller and several system controllers. The used development approach considers the systematic design of this hierarchical concept and enables the integration of requirements. The single modules of the control system are modeled as Statecharts. During the design process a method based on Petri Nets is used to analyze and verify the state-based structure of the supervisory controller. The verification of the control system functionalities is finally realized by a black box test approach. The required test sequences are systematically specified on the basis of the state transition graph of the supervisory controller.

The LHA Ship is the first application of Reliability at the ship and subsystem level for a naval combatant ship. Until the advent of the LHA Project the use of the Reliability discipline within the U.S. Navy had generally been confined to the component or “black box” level and usually in the electronics field. The expressed purpose of the Reliability Program is to impact the ship design which will lead to the delivery of a better weapons system to the Navy. This paper describes the scope of effort undertaken to comply with Military Standard MIL-STD-785. The three phases of this extensive undertaking are discussed, namely definition of requirements, performance of analytical tasks to support the requirements and verification of requirements. The data sources employed and the methods of utilization are also described. Certain conclusions are presented based on accomplishments to date and expectations for the future portion of the contract.

In avionics domain, currently most engineering efforts and costs come from integration, verification and validation activities. Each error found on requirements during product verification or validation requires a full engineering cycle to manage the change: impact analysis, design, realization, integration, verification and validation again. Hence, ensuring early and continuous validation of requirements in the engineering life cycle, becomes more and more crucial. In this paper, a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach is proposed. The proposed approach relies on SysML models and is composed of modelling tasks to capture requirements and to structure functional interfaces and functions. This approach has been applied in the frame of SAE ARP4754A aerospace recommended practices.

The calibration of Engine Control Units (ECUs) for road vehicles is challenged by stringent legal and environmental regulations, coupled with short development cycles. The growing number of vehicle variants, although sharing similar engines and control algorithms, requires different calibrations. Additionally, modern engines feature increasingly number of adjustment variables, along with complex parallel and nested conditions within the software, demanding a significant amount of measurement data during development. The current state-of-the-art (White Box) model-based ECU calibration proves effective but involves considerable effort for model construction and validation. This is often hindered by limited function documentation, available measurements, and hardware representation capabilities. This article introduces a model-based calibration approach using Neural Networks (Black Box) for two distinct ECU functional structures with minimal software documentation.

The Flight Data Recorder Visualiser (FDRV) has been developed to allow interactive, 3D visualisation of FDR/QAR data on low-cost PC platforms.

Passenger boarding is always part of the critical path of the aircraft turnaround: both efficient boarding and online prediction of the boarding progress are essential for a reliable turnaround progress. However, the boarding progress is mainly controlled by the passenger behavior. A fundamental scientific approach for aircraft boarding enables the consideration of individual passenger behaviors and operational constraints in order to develop a sustainable concept for enabling a prediction of the boarding progress. A reliable microscopic simulation approach is used to model the passenger behavior, where the individual movement is defined as a one-dimensional, stochastic, and time/space discrete transition process. The simulation covers a broad range of behaviors and boarding strategies as well as the integration of new technologies and procedures.

A Capillary Pumped Loop (CPL) is an advanced two-phase heat transport device which utilizes capillary forces developed within porous wicks to move a working fluid. The advantage this system has over conventional thermal management systems is its ability to transfer large heat loads over long distances at a controlled temperature. Extensive ground testing and two flight experiments have been performed over the past decade which have demonstrated the potential of the CPL as a reliable and versatile thermal control system for space applications. While the performance of CPL's as “black boxes” is now well understood, the internal thermo-fluid dynamics in a CPL are poorly known due to the difficulty of taking internal measurements. In order to visualize transient thermohydraulic processes occurring inside an evaporator, a see-through capillary evaporator was built and tested at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The Convair/Navy XFY-1 VTOL fighter was ahead of its time. In the early 1950s it became the first airplane to take off vertically, hover, transition to high speed level flight, transition back to hover, and land vertically. Pilot “Skeets” Coleman made a number of successful flights at Moffett Field South of San Francisco, at Brown Field near the California/Mexican border, and at San Diego's Lindbergh Field. This “first of a kind” aircraft soon adopted the name “POGO”. The POGO with its stall proof delta wing had near perfect aerodynamic characteristics in hover, transition and level flight. There were no “black boxes” needed for stability augmentation. The POGO was one of the very first aircraft to use hydraulic power flight controls - a system used today on all modern fighter and transport aircraft.

Providing an automated data collection system together with a regulatory flight recorder function, the Engine Performance Trend Monitor / Structural Integrity (EPTM/SI) System reduces flight crew workload and improves accuracy of collected data by using a lightweight, compact, survivable recording system.

The ADR-2 is an Accident Data Recorder that is supplied by Delphi. It is secured to the chassis of the race car and is required equipment in the IRL and IPS as well as the other series included in this report.