Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 203

This bibliography lists 150 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in January 1980

Honeywell Enhancing Airplane State Awareness (EASA) Project: Final Report on Refinement and Evaluation of Candidate Solutions for Airplane System State Awareness

The loss of pilot airplane state awareness (ASA) has been implicated as a factor in several aviation accidents identified by the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST). These accidents were investigated to identify precursors to the loss of ASA and develop technologies to address the loss of ASA. Based on a gap analysis, two technologies were prototyped and assessed with a formative pilot-in-the-loop evaluation in NASA Langleys full-motion Research Flight Deck. The technologies address: 1) data source anomaly detection in real-time, and 2) intelligent monitoring aids to provide nominal and predictive awareness of situations to be monitored and a mission timeline to visualize events of interest. The evaluation results indicated favorable impressions of both technologies for mitigating the loss of ASA in terms of operational utility, workload, acceptability, complexity, and usability. The team concludes that there is a feasible retrofit solution for improving ASA that would minimize certification risk, integration costs, and training impact

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 339)

This bibliography lists 105 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during July 1990. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing supplement 180, May 1978

This special bibliography lists 201 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in April 1978

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 327)

This bibliography lists 127 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during August, 1989. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

Criteria for acceptable stick force gradients of a light aeroplane

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.During the period 1980 to 2008 there were 359 fatal accidents involving UK registered light aeroplanes of which 36% occurred in visual meteorological conditions. In all, 216 lives were lost with accidents being attributed to the pilot 'failing to maintain proper control resulting in a stall or spin'. Dissimilar fatal stallrelated accident rates are evident for aeroplane makes & models of similar design. During the course of this programme of research, flight testing of two similar aeroplane models using a case study method showed marked differences in the variation of stick force with airspeed or stick force gradient in all flight conditions. This suggested that 'control feel' was a contributory factor towards the pilot’s failure to maintain proper control. Current certification standards for light aeroplanes rely upon the subjective assessment of stick force gradients by test pilots, requiring that substantial changes in airspeed are accompanied by clearly perceptible changes in stick force with no specified minimum gradient. This programme of research has been carried out to determine acceptable criteria for stick force gradients of a light aeroplane in all flight conditions. Criteria has been determined from flight tests of aeroplanes with different in-service safety records and subjective pilot workload assessment using simulated flying tasks with different stick force gradients performed by twenty GA pilots. Simulation tests indicated that pilot mental demand increased significantly (p > 0.05) when stick force gradient was reduced to ‘zero’, representing an aeroplane with neutral longitudinal static stability. A predictive model has been developed to estimate stick force gradients for a light aeroplane in any flight condition under quasi-static, longitudinal, non-manoeuvring flight and 1-g loading conditions. The model builds upon previous published work limited to cruising flight, and enables the estimation of stick forces and gradients due to high lift devices in the climb and landing condition by consideration of the combined effects of wing loading, CG, elevator gearing, flaps and elevator trim setting. Implemented using MATLAB, the model has been validated by comparing with flight test results for the case study aeroplanes and showed mean differences of ±0.025 daN/kt. The predictive model should be used in preliminary aeroplane design to assess tendencies towards neutral stability in high workload, safety critical flight conditions such as the take-off and landing. In addition, the model should be used to analyse existing aeroplanes with comparatively low or neutral stick force gradients in safety critical flight phases and to predict the effects of changing CG and/or flap limits to increase stick force gradient and improve control feel. The combined results of these studies suggest that a minimum acceptable stick force gradient for a non-aerobatic light aeroplane in all flight conditions should be nonzero and between 0.10~0.13 daN/kt. A stable and predictable stick force variation with airspeed will ensure that any substantial deviation from trimmed airspeed is accompanied by a stick force change clearly perceptible to the pilot and also provide additional warning of the proximity to the stall. The use of specific criteria to complement qualitative test pilot opinion, will assist in confirming compliance and provide consistency with current standards for sailplanes/powered sailplanes and large commercial aeroplanes, both of which already have defined minimum acceptable gradients.This study is funded by the Thomas Gerald Gray Charitable Trust Research Scholarship Scheme and the Brunel University School of Engineering and Design/Department of Mechanical Engineering

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 314)

This bibliography lists 139 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in August, 1988

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: a Continuing Bibliography with Indexes (Supplement 328)

This bibliography lists 104 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during September, 1989. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

Effect of time span and task load on pilot mental workload

Two sets of experiments were run to examine how the mental workload of a pilot might be measured. The effects of continuous manual control activity versus discrete assigned mental tasks (including the length of time between receiving an assignment and executing it) were examined. The first experiment evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of measuring mental workload with an objective perforamance (altitude deviations) and five subjective ratings (activity level, complexity, difficulty, stress, and workload). The second set of experiments built upon the first set by increasing workload intensities and adding another performance measure: airspeed deviation. The results are discussed for both low and high experience pilots