NASA LaRC Workshop on Guidance, Navigation, Controls, and Dynamics for Atmospheric Flight, 1993

This publication is a collection of materials presented at a NASA workshop on guidance, navigation, controls, and dynamics (GNC&D) for atmospheric flight. The workshop was held at the NASA Langley Research Center on March 18-19, 1993. The workshop presentations describe the status of current research in the GNC&D area at Langley over a broad spectrum of research branches. The workshop was organized in eight sessions: overviews, general, controls, military aircraft, dynamics, guidance, systems, and a panel discussion. A highlight of the workshop was the panel discussion which addressed the following issue: 'Direction of guidance, navigation, and controls research to ensure U.S. competitiveness and leadership in aerospace technologies.

Decentralized aircraft landing scheduling at single runway non-controlled airports

The existing air transportation system is approaching a bottleneck because its dominant huband- spoke model results in a concentration of a large percentage of the air traffic at a few hub airports. Advanced technologies are greatly needed to enhance the transportation capabilities of the small airports in the U.S.A., and distribute the high volume of air traffic at the hub airports to those small airports, which are mostly non-controlled airports. Currently, two major focus areas of research are being pursued to achieve this objective. One focus concentrates on the development of tools to improve operations in the current Air Traffic Management system. A more long-term research effort focuses on the development of decentralized Air Traffic Management techniques. This dissertation takes the latter approach and seeks to analyze the degree of decentralization for scheduling aircraft landings in the dynamic operational environment at single runway noncontrolled airports. Moreover, it explores the feasibility and capability of scheduling aircraft landings within uninterrupted free-flight environment in which there is no existence of Air Traffic Control (ATC). First, it addresses the approach of developing static optimization algorithms for scheduling aircraft landings and, thus, analyzes the capability of automated aircraft landing scheduling at single runway non-controlled airports. Then, it provides detailed description of the implementation of a distributed Air Traffic Management (ATM) system that achieves decentralized aircraft landing scheduling with acceptable performance whereas a solution to the distributed coordination issues is presented. Finally real-time Monte Carlo flight simulations of multi-aircraft landing scenarios are conducted to evaluate the static and dynamic performance of the aircraft landing scheduling algorithms and operation concepts introduced. Results presented in the dissertation demonstrate that decentralized aircraft landing scheduling at single runway non-controlled airports can be achieved. It is shown from the flight simulations that reasonable performance of decentralized aircraft landing scheduling is achieved with successful integration of publisher/subscriber communication scheme and aircraft landing scheduling model. The extension from the non-controlled airport application to controlled airport case is expected with suitable amendment, where the reliance on centralized air traffic management can be reduced gradually in favor of a decentralized management to provide more airspace capacity, flight flexibility, and increase operation robustness

Proceedings: Sixth Annual Workshop on Meteorological and Environmental Inputs to Aviation Systems

The topics of interaction of the atmosphere with aviation systems, the better definition and implementation of services to operators, and the collection and interpretation of data for establishing operational criteria relating the total meteorological inputs from the atmospheric sciences to the needs of aviation communities were addressed

B-737 flight test of curved-path and steep-angle approaches using MLS guidance

A series of flight tests were conducted to collect data for jet transport aircraft flying curved-path and steep-angle approaches using Microwave Landing System (MLS) guidance. During the test, 432 approaches comprising seven different curved-paths and four glidepath angles varying from 3 to 4 degrees were flown in NASA Langley's Boeing 737 aircraft (Transport Systems Research Vehicle) using an MLS ground station at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility. Subject pilots from Piedmont Airlines flew the approaches using conventional cockpit instrumentation (flight director and Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI). The data collected will be used by FAA procedures specialists to develop standards and criteria for designing MLS terminal approach procedures (TERPS). The use of flight simulation techniques greatly aided the preliminary stages of approach development work and saved a significant amount of costly flight time. This report is intended to complement a data report to be issued by the FAA Office of Aviation Standards which will contain all detailed data analysis and statistics