N08-122 TITLE: Advanced Intelligent Web-Based Options to Acquire and Analyze Aircraft Health and Test Data

TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Information Systems

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMA-231 - E-2 Hawkeye; ACAT I

The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals, their country of origin, and what tasks each would accomplish in the statement of work in accordance with section 3.5.b.(7) of the solicitation.

OBJECTIVE: Develop advanced intelligent options to acquire and analyze flight test data, analytic data, aircraft health and maintenance data, and provide innovative options to interface with available supply, logistics, and military flight operations quality assurance data.

DESCRIPTION: The aircraft health status is extremely important in successfully accomplishing both flight test and operational missions and can be evaluated in many ways in both flight and non-flight conditions. Flight test and related analytic data are required to support both land and ship-based testing and advanced mission analysis. The large amount of aircraft health data, the various sources of maintenance, test and analytic data, and different data formats present a challenge to maintenance and flight test personnel. Many limited data options exist that focus on specific areas related to aircraft flight testing and maintenance that provide little or no assistance to flight test team members working on in-service or out-of-production aircraft. The test aircraft may have several hundred instrumentation parameters that sample data at high frequencies. Low frequency data may be obtained from internal aircraft systems and health data from health and usage monitoring equipment. Analytic models used to support flight testing may generate considerable amounts of computational fluid dynamics data and advanced aerodynamic data. Classical flight testing involves extensive flight test planning, instrumentation, testing, analysis, and reporting. It is important to develop advanced intelligent options to acquire and analyze flight test data, analytic data, aircraft health and maintenance data, and provide innovative options to interface with available supply, logistics, and military flight operations quality assurance data.

PHASE I: Demonstrate the feasibility of developing advanced options to acquire and analyze aircraft health, flight test, and related analytic data. Evaluate existing aircraft health systems, maintenance data options, flight test data systems, and related supply and logistics data options. Review innovative options available to analyze the aircraft health monitoring data. Commence developing the advanced intelligent options to acquire and analyze flight test data, analytic data, aircraft health and maintenance data.

PHASE II: Develop prototype advanced intelligent options to acquire and analyze aircraft health data, test data, and related analytic support data. Demonstrate how the innovative options can be interfaced with existing maintenance data options and related supply, logistics, and flight test data using innovative techniques. Show how the vehicle limits could be integrated with an innovative flight test data system. Develop advanced analytic tools to compare flight and maintenance deficiencies and determine any out-of-tolerance conditions. Show how the advanced intelligent options can be used to transfer data to maintenance control computers and flight test data to the test team members� personal computers. Demonstrate the innovative options capability to support the military flight operations quality assurance process.

PHASE III: Extend the innovative options to acquire and analyze aircraft health and test data capability to telemeter the information from the aircraft to select personnel computers. Demonstrate application of the advanced intelligent options support to specific Army and Air Force aircraft acquisition programs. Show how the technology could also be applied to commercial aircraft applications.

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: Compare the military flight operations quality assurance process to the commercial flight operations quality assurance process with the FAA, aircraft contractors, and any activity performing commercial vehicle or equipment testing at remote sites.

REFERENCES:
1. OSD memorandum subject: MFOQA Process Implementation of 11Oct 2005

2. Avionics Magazine, Military FOQA Next Step in Safety, 14 Feb 2007

3. Dousis, Dimitri, V-22 Visualization Toolset (VDVT) Implementation, IEEE Aeroapace Conference, Big Sky, MT, 3-10 Mar 2007

4. Anon, Track 11.0, Diagnostics, Prognostics, and Health Management, IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT

5. Carico, Dean, Intelligent Aircraft/Ship Data Analysis Options: A Systems Approach, NDIA, 8th Annual Systems Engineering Conference, San Diego, CA, 24-27 Oct 2005

6. Coble, Keith, Drowning in Data, Starving for Knowledge, OMEGA Data Environment, A White Paper on Securing Meaningful Access to the Information Stored in Our Vast Data Warehouse, http://wylelabs.com/services/telemetryanddatasystems/whp/omegde.hmtl

KEYWORDS: aircraft; flight test; aircraft maintenance; aircraft health; MFOQA; analytic models

** TOPIC AUTHOR (TPOC) **

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