Innovative Method for Aircraft Gross Weight and Center of Gravity Estimation
Navy SBIR FY2011.2

Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2011.2
Topic No.: N112-114
Topic Title: Innovative Method for Aircraft Gross Weight and Center of Gravity Estimation
Proposal No.: N112-114-0126
Firm: Technical Data Analysis, Inc.
3190 Fairview Park Drive
Suite 650
Falls Church, Virginia 22042
Contact: Nicoleta Apetre
Phone: (703) 226-4076
Web Site: www.tda-i.com
Abstract: An accurate, automated assessment of helicopter Gross Weight (GW) and Center of Gravity (CG) is critical for the determination of aircraft fatigue and life estimates since GW/CG affect static and dynamic characteristics of helicopters. Therefore GW and CG of a helicopter are valuable information in calculating reliable loads and remaining fatigue life. These in turn will assist the condition based maintenance systems used to enhance safety and reduce the operating cost of helicopters. An automated system for GW and CG will improve aircraft structural life estimation and performance characteristics, will relieve pilot's burden of logging data, and will also improve situational awareness. To capture GW and CG changes continuously throughout the flight, advanced methods are required as conventional methods are not sufficient and prone to errors. Technical Data Analysis, Inc. (TDA) envisions a comprehensive solution based on a combination of physics based (deterministic) models and data driven (stochastic) models. TDA's team believes that combining both methods will overcome each technique limitations and will take advantage of each method's strengths. Therefore TDA's team aims to develop a hybrid system that combines the powerful estimation capabilities of the Kalman Filter (KF) scheme with the strong learning capabilities of the Neural Network (NN).
Benefits: The commercialization of a simple (i.e., user-friendly) yet effective platform for GW/CG estimations will have widespread effect throughout the military and non-military community. Upon effective demonstration of the proposed algorithm on a Navy helicopter, TDA intends to extend this system to different aircrafts. TDA will approach the other branches of the military, US Army, US Air Force, and US Coast Guard to implement GW/CG tracking system on their vehicles. TDA's team will investigate the benefits of developing KF and NN within Simulink in order to directly output machine language code to a hardware device such as a micro-controller. This greatly enhances the possibilities for an on-board, real-time GW/CG monitoring system. This device could be a unit which identically accepts the input and can provide output on a data bus for use on the flight deck displays, to provide warning to the pilots of a breach or an impending breach in GW and/or CG restrictions. Due to the aging fleet in military and commercial aircraft the need for robust Prognosis and Health Management (PHM) techniques has never been greater than it is now. Our proposed work plan complemented by our previous success in advancing the state of the art in regime recognition algorithms strongly enables us to seek employment of the developed technologies. We strongly believe that the proposed research efforts will form the foundation for a shift in paradigm of preventive maintenance from schedule-based to condition-based maintenance. The commercialization of our GW/CG technologies will be fully realized in Phase III of the program where we will develop pilot programs with DoD agencies and aerospace industry. The goals of the pilot programs will be to develop realistic business plans to recap the benefits of this new technology. The GW/CG techniques and procedures will be fully embedded within the framework of the current practices/applications of scheduled based inspection and maintenance plans. Testing and inspection procedures specifically tailored for each system program and training manuals will be developed for each pilot program. Finally, certification procedures will be developed for military and commercial use of the GW/CG technology. The immediate benefit of this tool is to reduce total ownership cost by refining serviceably criteria, rework and overhaul limits, maintenance schedule while assuring safety of aircrafts. Improved risk and reliability of various systems can be achieved significantly using the PHM modules as built in this effort.

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