(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-06)
Puranik, Tejas G.; Harrison, Evan D.; Min, Sanggyu; Jimenez, Hernando; Mavris, Dimitri N.
Ensuring a safe and stabilized approach and landing is one of the important objectives in General Aviation applications. This phase is one of the main phases during which accidents occur. A "nominal" or reference trajectory for General Aviation approach and landing operations is critical for flight instruction and retrospective safety assessments reliant on flight data records captured with on-board systems. While this is a more crisply defined area in commercial aircraft operations, it is not so well-defined in General Aviation. The different aspects that need to be considered in defining a nominal trajectory and provide analyses that can be carried out using flight data records are examined. Various ways of defining this nominal or reference approach trajectory are proposed with the eventual aim of using this in conjunction with energy-based methods and metrics to assess and enhance safety in General Aviation aircraft operations.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-06)
Puranik, Tejas G.; Harrison, Evan D.; Min, Sanggyu; Jimenez, Hernando; Mavris, Dimitri N.
Energy management and energy state awareness are important concepts in aircraft safety analysis. Many loss-of-control accidents can be attributed to poor energy management. Energy-based metrics provide a measurable quantity of the energy state of the aircraft and can be viewed as an objective currency to evaluate various safety-critical conditions. In this work, we have surveyed key energy-based metrics from various domains and identified the challenges of implementing these metrics for General Aviation operations. Modifications to existing metrics and definition of some new energy metrics are proposed. A methodology is developed that can be used to evaluate and visualize the energy metrics. These energy metrics can then be used to understand and enhance General Aviation aircraft safety using retrospective flight data analysis.