Flight envelope monitoring systems have a large potential for use on both existing and future aircraft, including general aviation, military, commercial/commuter, and UAVs. Commuter aircraft are particularly important targets because they typically operate at lower altitudes/airspeeds, putting them at greater risk of environmental or structurally based aerodynamic performance degradation, including ice, heavy rain, and bird strikes. The real-time estimation of aircraft boundaries and controllability provided by the system is of utmost importance to the pilot encountering edge of the envelope flight, or flight into adverse conditions. The technology is equally valuable for UAVs where it is difficult, or impossible for the remote operator to sense differences in performance due to environmental hazards or structural/battle damage. The flight envelope monitoring system can aid these types of aircraft either as a standalone warning system, or possibly licensed to the aircraft manufacturer and built into a more complex, integrated system.
The proposed control surface hinge moment based flight envelope monitoring system technology is synergistic with national and NASA priorities in aerospace R/R&D, as described in the National Research Council's "Decadal Survey of Civil Aeronautics", in 2006. Aircraft health management systems are listed as critical research initiatives within the Aviation Safety Program, specifically in the Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) project. IVHM calls for advancing the state-of-the-art in on-board health state assessment including continuous diagnosis and prognosis. The proposed hinge moment based flight envelope monitoring system directly addresses these NASA priorities by providing pilots with real-time estimates of the vehicle flight envelope, including restrictions due to aerodynamic degradation from heavy rain, icing, insect or bird impacts, or structural damage.
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