The study of hierarchical, hybrid control systems in the framework of air traac management (ATM) is presented. The need for a new ATM arises from the overcrowding of large urban airports and the need to more eeciently handle larger numbers of aircraft, without building new runways. Recent technological advances, such as the availability of relatively inexpensive and fast real time computers bot...

An air traffic control system’s main function is to separate aircraft. The computer supporting the system assists the air traffic controllers by generating a conflict alert whenever it predicts that two aircraft are about to get too close to each other. The performance of the conflict alert function is a key element to the overall functioning of the air traffic control system. A set of metrics ...

The objective of the NASA Aviation Safety Program is to improve the safety of current and future aircraft operating in the National Airspace System. Research under this program has focused on vehicle design, construction, operation and maintenance. Reducing aircraft loss of control accidents is critical to increasing aviation safety as it is the largest and most fatal aircraft accident category...

Demonstrating the reliability of flight control algorithms is critical to integrating unmanned aircraft systems into the civilian airspace. For many potential applications, design and certification of these algorithms will rely heavily on mathematical models of the aircraft dynamics. Therefore, the aerospace community must develop flight test platforms to support the advancement of model-based ...

The stringent comfort requirements that the airliners are providing to the aircraft manufacturers, also for the small regional commuter are increasing the attention of the aircraft designer to the aircraft interior noise performance. The research on the design methodologies is very much improved in the last years providing new materials and new system like the active noise control usefull to ge...

Given the sequence of phases and flight modes that represent the flight plan of a commercial aircraft, the initial and final states, and a set of path constraints, we solve the multi-phase optimal control problem of finding control inputs, switching times between flight modes and the corresponding trajectory of the aircraft that minimizes fuel consumption. The aircraft in flight is modeled as a...

Situational awareness and decision-making are necessary to identify and select the optimal set of mutually non-exclusive hypothesis in order to maximize mission success by adapting system behavior accordingly. This paper presents a hierarchical and decentralized approach for integrated damage assessment and trajectory re-planning in aircraft with uncertainties in navigational decision-making. A...

Regulatory agencies worldwide are working towards safely integrating unmanned aircraft into their respective national airspaces. Reliability assessment of unmanned aircraft is a key step in the certification process. This thesis presents an analysis framework for the reliability assessment of small unmanned aircraft. Specifically, the effect of the placement of actuators and control surfaces on...

In this paper, a 3-axis motion simulator, as a three degree-of-freedom test stand for aircraft instrument testing and calibrating within a Hardware-In-The-Loop Environment, is studied for control analyses. A mathematical model of the simulator mechanical structure is derived and then linearized using Taylor series expansion around the instantaneous equilibrium point which is the aircraft time-d...