A knowledge based application of the extended aircraft interrogation and display system

A family of multiple-processor ground support test equipment was used to test digital flight-control systems on high-performance research aircraft. A unit recently built for the F-18 high alpha research vehicle project is the latest model in a series called the extended aircraft interrogation and display system. The primary feature emphasized monitors the aircraft MIL-STD-1553B data buses and provides real-time engineering units displays of flight-control parameters. A customized software package was developed to provide real-time data interpretation based on rules embodied in a highly structured knowledge database. The configuration of this extended aircraft interrogation and display system is briefly described, and the evolution of the rule based package and its application to failure modes and effects testing on the F-18 high alpha research vehicle is discussed

A rule-based system for real-time analysis of control systems

An approach to automate the real-time analysis of flight critical health monitoring and system status is being developed and evaluated at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility. A software package was developed in-house and installed as part of the extended aircraft interrogation and display system. This design features a knowledge-base structure in the form of rules to formulate interpretation and decision logic of real-time data. This technique has been applied for ground verification and validation testing and flight testing monitoring where quick, real-time, safety-of-flight decisions can be very critical. In many cases post processing and manual analysis of flight system data are not required. The processing is described of real-time data for analysis along with the output format which features a message stack display. The development, construction, and testing of the rule-driven knowledge base, along with an application using the X-31A flight test program, are presented

AFTI/F-111 MAW flight control system and redundancy management description

The wing on the NASA F-111 transonic aircraft technology (TACT) airplane was modified to provide flexible leading and trailing edge flaps; this modified wing is known as the mission adaptive wing (MAW). A dual digital primary fly-by-wire flight control system was developed with analog backup reversion for redundancy. This report discusses the functions, design, and redundancy management of the flight control system for these flaps

Engineering Responses to Pandemics

Focusing on pandemic influenza, this chapter approaches the planning for and response to such a major worldwide health event as a complex engineering systems problem. Action-oriented analysis of pandemics requires a broad inclusion of academic disciplines since no one domain can cover a significant fraction of the problem. Numerous research papers and action plans have treated pandemics as purely medical happenings, focusing on hospitals, health care professionals, creation and distribution of vaccines and anti-virals, etc. But human behavior with regard to hygiene and social distancing constitutes a first-order partial brake or control of the spread and intensity of infection. Such behavioral options are “non-pharmaceutical interventions.” (NPIs) The chapter employs simple mathematical models to study alternative controls of infection, addressing a well-known parameter in epidemiology, R0, the “reproductive number,” defined as the mean number of new infections generated by an index case. Values of R0 greater than 1.0 usually indicate that the infection begins with exponential growth, the generation-to-generation growth rate being R0. R0 is broken down into constituent parts related to the frequency and intensity of human contacts, both partially under our control. It is suggested that any numerical value for R0 has little meaning outside the social context to which it pertains. Difference equation models are then employed to study the effects of heterogeneity of population social contact rates, the analysis showing that the disease tends to be driven by high frequency individuals. Related analyses show the futility of trying geographically to isolate the disease. Finally, the models are operated under a variety of assumptions related to social distancing and changes in hygienic behavior. The results are promising in terms of potentially reducing the total impact of the pandemic

Stopping Pandemic Flu: Government and Community Interventions in a Multi-Community Model

Focusing on mitigation strategies for global pandemic influenza, we use elementary mathematical models to evaluate the implementation and timing of intervention strategies such as travel restrictions, vaccination, social distancing and improved hygiene. A spreadsheet model of infection spread between several linked heterogeneous communities is based on analytical calculations and Monte Carlo simulations. Since human behavior will likely change during the course of a pandemic, thereby altering the dynamics of the disease, we incorporate a feedback parameter into our model to reflect altered behavior. Our results indicate that while a flu pandemic could be devastating; there are coping methods that when implemented quickly and correctly can significantly mitigate the severity of a global outbreak

Solicitation by and for Attorneys

The young attorney often may have time on his hands. He may be tempted to increase his following by advertising or by soliciting clients, but rules of the bar and statutes against solicitation prevent this. There are, of course, some forms of advertising open to all lawyers. National directories and law lists, such as the Martin dale-Hubbell Law Directory, theoretically published only for lawyers, not only advertise the attorney and his firm, but also list the names of any clients whom he wishes to give as representative of his practice and his specialties

Implementation of an Adaptive Controller System from Concept to Flight Test

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Dryden Flight Research Center (Edwards, California) is conducting ongoing flight research using adaptive controller algorithms. A highly modified McDonnell-Douglas NF-15B airplane called the F-15 Intelligent Flight Control System (IFCS) was used for these algorithms. This airplane has been modified by the addition of canards and by changing the flight control systems to interface a single-string research controller processor for neural network algorithms. Research goals included demonstration of revolutionary control approaches that can efficiently optimize aircraft performance for both normal and failure conditions, and to advance neural-network-based flight control technology for new aerospace systems designs. Before the NF-15B IFCS airplane was certified for flight test, however, certain processes needed to be completed. This paper presents an overview of these processes, including a description of the initial adaptive controller concepts followed by a discussion of modeling formulation and performance testing. Upon design finalization, the next steps are: integration with the system interfaces, verification of the software, validation of the hardware to the requirements, design of failure detection, development of safety limiters to minimize the effect of erroneous neural network commands, and creation of flight test control room displays to maximize human situational awareness

Analytic solutions of the Rolie Poly model in time-dependent shear

We consider shear flows that comprise of step changes in the shear rate. For these flows, we derive analytic solutions of the Rolie-Poly constitutive equation. Our method involves piecing together solutions for constant rate shear in a variety of flow rate regimes. We obtain solutions for interrupted shear, recoverable strain and non-linear relaxation following cessation of flow. Whenever strong flow is present we neglect reptation, as other mechanisms dominate and for interrupted shear our solution is approximate as we neglect convective constraint release. Our analytic solutions provide new insight in several ways. These include revealing the mechanism of some experimental features of these flows; suggesting a method to extract the polymer contribution to the normal stress in the velocity gradient direction (σyy) from shear stress measurements alone; and a method to isolate the influence of convective constraint release (CCR) from damping function measurements. We also run complementary GLaMM model calculations to verify that insight from our analytic approach translates to this more detailed model

33.8 GHz CCS Survey of Molecular Cores in Dark Clouds

We have conducted a survey of the CCS $J_N = 3_2-2_1$ line toward 11 dark clouds and star-forming regions at 30 arcsec spatial resolution and 0.054 km/s velocity resolution. CCS was only detected in quiescent clouds, not in active star-forming regions. The CCS distribution shows remarkable clumpy structure, and 25 clumps are identified in 7 clouds. Seven clumps with extremely narrow nonthermal linewidths < 0.1 km/s are among the most quiescent clumps ever found. The CCS clumps tend to exist around the higher density regions traced by NH_3 emission or submillimeter continuum sources, and the distribution is not spherically symmetric. Variation of the CCS abundance was suggested as an indicator of the evolutionary status of star formation. However, we can only find a weak correlation between N(CCS) and $n_{H_2,vir}$. The velocity distributions of CCS clouds reveal that a systematic velocity pattern generally exists. The most striking feature in our data is a ring structure in the position-velocity diagram of L1544 with an well-resolved inner hole of 0.04 pc x 0.13 km/s and an outer boundary of 0.16 pc x 0.55 km/s. This position-velocity structure clearly indicates an edge-on disk or ring geometry, and it can be interpreted as a collapsing disk with an infall velocity $\gtrsim$ 0.1 km/s and a rotational velocity less than our velocity resolution. Nonthermal linewidth distribution is generally coherent in CCS clouds, which could be evidence for the termination of Larson's Law at small scales, $\sim$ 0.1 pc.Comment: 21 pages, 25 ostscript figures, accepted for publication in the Supplement Series of the Astrophysical Journal (May 2000