Complex aircraft require periodic maintenance checks to assess needed repairs for continued vehicle availability. However, such checks are expensive and the associated aircraft downtime can reduce fleet mission effectiveness. The United States Air Force plans to consolidate the time-based (isochronal) C-5 aircraft major inspection activities for eight C-5 home stations into three locations. Iso...

In aviation, aircraft ground handling defines the servicing of an aircraft while it is on the ground and (usually ) parked at a terminal gate of an airport. Ground handling operations include many activities: passenger handling, ground transport, assistance in blocking the aircraft and delivery of required equipment, loading and unloading of the aircraft, including provision and operation of re...

Title of Document: EMERGENCY FLIGHT PLANNING FOR THE GENERALIZED TRANSPORT MODEL AIRCRAFT WITH LEFT WING DAMAGE Yunshen Tang, Master of Science, 2006 Directed By: Assistant Professor, Ella M. Atkins, Department of Aerospace Engineering A nontrivial fraction of aviation accidents are caused by in-flight damage or failures that reduce performance. Researchers are working to ensure future avionics...

This paper details the design and development of the Airborne Subscale Transport Aircraft Research (AirSTAR) test-bed at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC). The aircraft is a 5.5% dynamically scaled, remotely piloted, twin-turbine, swept wing, Generic Transport Model (GTM) which will be used to provide an experimental flight test capability for research experiments pertaining to dynamics model...

This paper presents a static aeroelastic model and longitudinal trim model for the analysis of a flexible wing transport aircraft. The static aeroelastic model is built using a structural model based on finite-element modeling and coupled to an aerodynamic model that uses vortex-lattice solution. An automatic geometry generation tool is used to close the loop between the structural and aerodyna...

This study developed a model with cost functions formulated for different stages of cargo transport operation. A case analysis was performed with actual data from four air cargo traffic routes and eight aircraft types to validate the applicability of the model. The results show that the optimal payloads for various aircraft types vary with fuel price fluctuations. Furthermore, this study determ...

Aircraft performance enhancement by integrating the propulsion control system with the primary flight control system is demonstrated through two nonlinear flight control design examples. In the first example, high performance aircraft turning performance improvement using engine thrust modulation is demonstrated. In the second example, the flight propulsion system integration is used to achieve...