Overview
Recent airliner accident and incident statistics show that about 16% of the accidents between 1993 and 2007 can be attributed to Loss of Control In-flight (LOC-I), caused by a piloting mistake, technical malfunctions or unusual upsets due to external disturbances. Loss of flight control remains the second largest accident category after Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) accounting for 23% of air accidents worldwide.
Loss of Control (LOC) is intrinsically related to the guidance and control (G&C) system of the aircraft, and includes sensors and actuators failures. The state-of-practice for aircraft manufacturers to diagnose these faults and obtain full flight envelope protection is to provide high levels of hardware redundancy in order to perform coherency tests and ensure sufficient available control action.
This hardware-redundancy based Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) approach fits into current aircraft certification processes while ensuring the highest level of safety standards. On the other hand, FDD solutions increase the aircraft weight and complexity and thus its manufacturing and maintenance costs. The FDD approach is becoming increasingly problematic when used in conjunction with the many innovative technical solutions being developed by the aeronautical sector to satisfy the greener and safety imperatives demanded by society like: more affordable, safer, cleaner, quieter. This is increasingly creating a gap between the scientific methods advocated within the academic and research communities and the technological developments required by the aeronautics industry.
This applicability gap has resulted in a de facto "fault diagnosis bottleneck", a technological barrier constraining the full realization of the next generation of air transport due to the need to ensure the current highest levels of aircraft safety when implementing novel green and efficient technologies.
ADDSAFE tries to overcome this technological gap by facing the following two challenges:
- helping the scientific community to develop the best suited FDD (Fault Detection and Diagnosis) methods capable of handling the real-world challenges raised by industry; and
- ensuring acceptance and widespread use of these advanced theoretical methods by the aircraft industry.
The overall aim of the project is to develop and apply model-based FDD methods for civil aircraft in order to increase aircraft safety and reduce development/maintenance costs.
From a technological and scientific perspective the main benefits of the project are:
- identification of a set of guidelines for FDD design and analysis for aircraft G&C;
- improved FDD methods and understanding of their applicability to aircraft FDD;
- a step towards a V&V process for advanced aircraft diagnostic systems;
- demonstration of the most promising model-based FDD designs on industrial state-of-art flight simulation platforms.
From the perspective of the benefits to society, ADDSAFE :
- supports greener technical solutions;
- maintains current highest safety standards;
- improves aircraft transport cost & efficiency.
ADDSAFE is divided in 6 work-packages (WP 0 up to WP 5) decomposed into a total of 14 sub-work packages (WP 0.1 up to WP 5.2). The project strives to combine the knowledge and to increase synergies between the scientific and the technological partners at all levels of the project development cycle. Thus, most of the tasks include participation by all partners.
Funding
Results
Definition of a set of guidelines for aircraft G&C model-based fault detection and diagnosis.
Improved FDD methods and understanding of their applicability to aircraft G&C.
A step towards a V&V process for advanced diagnostic systems.
Innovation aspects
The results will help achieve the European Vision 2020 challenges related to the “greening” of the aircraft, by supporting the application of already developed sustainable solutions, as well as to “safety”, by opening the door to develop new technologies to maintain the current highest aircraft safety levels regardless of the increase in air traffic.
Strategy targets
1. An efficient and integrated mobility system: 1.3 Secure Transport
Readiness
Further research is necessary