Applications of advanced electric/electronic technology to conventional aircraft

The desirability of seven advanced technologies as applied to three commercial aircraft of 1985 to 1995 was investigated. Digital fly by wire, multiplexing, ring laser gyro, integrated avionics, all electric airplane, electric load management, and fiber optics were considered for 500 passenger, 50 passenger, and 30 passenger aircraft. The major figure of merit used was Net Value of Technology based on procurement and operating cost over the life of the aircraft. An existing computer program, ASSET, was used to resize the aircraft and evalute fuel usage and maintenance costs for each candidate configuration. Conclusions were that, for the 500 passenger aircraft, all candidates had a worthwhile payoff with the all electric airplane having a large payoff

Development of advanced avionics systems applicable to terminal-configured vehicles

A technique to add the time constraint to the automatic descent feature of the existing L-1011 aircraft Flight Management System (FMS) was developed. Software modifications were incorporated in the FMS computer program and the results checked by lab simulation and on a series of eleven test flights. An arrival time dispersion (2 sigma) of 19 seconds was achieved. The 4 D descent technique can be integrated with the time-based metering method of air traffic control. Substantial reductions in delays at today's busy airports should result

Data and abstraction for scenario-based modeling with Petri nets

Scenario-based modeling is an approach for describing behaviors of a distributed system in terms of partial runs, called scenarios. Deriving an operational system from a set of scenarios is the main challenge that is typically addressed by either synthesizing system components or by providing operational semantics. Over the last years, several established scenario-based techniques have been adopted to Petri nets. Their adaptation allows for verifying scenario-based models and for synthesizing individual components from scenarios within one formal technique, by building on Petri net theory. However, current adaptations of scenarios face two limitations: a system modeler (1) cannot abstract from concrete behavior, and (2) cannot explicitly describe data in scenarios. This paper lifts these limitations for scenarios in the style of Live Sequence Charts (LSCs). We extend an existing model for scenarios, that features Petri net-based semantics, verification and synthesis techniques, and close the gap between LSCs and Petri nets further