Search Results

A critical situation can suddenly develop in the ‘pilot (automaton) - aircraft - operational environment’ system behavior as a result of unfavorable mixing and cross-coupling of several demanding operational factors. The latter can include adverse weather effects, pilot (automaton) errors, mechanical failures and hidden design flaws. These factors are typically linked by strong cause-and-effect relationships, which can disturb the normal flow of external forces and moments acting on the aircraft. As a result, a multifactor situation can quickly propagate towards a chain reaction type accident. Specialists (designers, flight test pilots/engineers, regulators, investigators, educators/instructors, line pilots) have limited resources to address multifactor cases during the aircraft life cycle. The main difficulty is combinatorics (‘the curse of dimensionality’) which determines technical, time and budget constraints.

A generic situational model of the “pilot (automaton) - aircraft - operational environment” system is employed as a ‘virtual safety test article’. The goal is to identify a priori potentially catastrophic, safe and interim developments in the system behavior in complex (multi-factor) flight situations. Distinguishing features of the technique include: affordability and autonomy of experimentation (a pilot and special hardware are not required), easy planning and fast-time simulation of a large number of non-standard flight scenarios on a computer, and automated assessment and classification of ‘flights’ using formalized safety criteria. A software tool called VATES, which implements this technique, is demonstrated. Several new graphic-analytical formats designed for system safety knowledge mapping are introduced using realistic situation examples.