Aviation and the Institute of Measurement and Control

Citation

(2003), "Aviation and the Institute of Measurement and Control", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 75 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2003.12775faf.014

Aviation and the Institute of Measurement and Control

Aviation and the Institute of Measurement and Control

Keywords: Aviation, Aerospace industry, UK, Institute of Measurement and Control

The aviation panel

The Institute of Measurement and Control has an Aviation Panel since January 2000. At present, it has eight members whose experience represents a wide variety of aviation interests, such as aviation safety, aircraft economics, aircraft operations, equipment manufacture, system development and integration, helicopter engineering, consultancy, human factors, avionics and automatic flight control. One of the reasons that the Institute established the panel was that its members have been involved for many years in the extensive use of measurement techniques and control technology which are important features of aviation. It is intended that the Panel's activities should provide a focus for those broad aviation functions which rely on measurement and control to ensure safety and effectiveness; these features would not be directly concerned with aerodynamics, aircraft structures, or aircraft engine technology. Those areas are well covered in the UK by the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) and the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.

The Panel, in partnership with the Guild of Airline Pilots and Navigators (GAPAN), the RAeS, and the National Air Traffic Services (NATS), is planning to hold an Aviation Awareness Day in November 2003 as part of the centenary celebrations marking the Wright brothers' first powered flight at Kitty Hawk on 17 December 1903. Its purpose is to provide career teachers in London of children in the age group of 13-14 years (before the children are set upon a particular educational qualification pathway) with an overview of the wide variety of career opportunities which aviation offers, and will continue to offer for the foreseeable future. It is hoped that this event will address the growing problem of a shortage of skilled labour which is likely to be exacerbated if the government's target of 50 per cent of all 18year old in higher education is achieved.

Future activities being planned include colloquia on the Influence of Finance on the Development of Aircraft and Aviation Services, the Importance of Accurate Accident Statistics for the Maintenance of Aviation Safety, and the Identification of Problems with Certification of Psychological Fitness for Aircrew Licensing. A series of luncheons in London will also be arranged to provide a focus for UK aviation experts and personnel from aviation organisations of the new entrant countries of the expanded European Community to exchange concerns about aircraft regulations and operational practices, and to foster an environment of help and information which will be beneficial to all the participants.

In carrying out these activities, the panel considered that it was necessary to make members of the Institute aware of the nature of the current aviation industry and to give them some idea of what may happen in the next 7 years. What follows is a short survey and tentative forecast which was written to help the ordinary member understand aviation today and tomorrow.

Aviation

Aviation encompasses every activity relating to the transportation of people or things by air. The purpose of the transportation may be peaceful or offensive. It is a worldwide activity and requires that those who are involved in its functions be highly skilled and capable of assuming the highest levels of responsibility. The standards required for efficiency and safety have to be high throughout the world, even though many of the countries involved may not be technologically advanced.

Aviation is important for several reasons:

its use of advanced technology; its need for highly skilled engineering, scientific, and numerate personnel; its environmental impact; its capacity for military destruction; its financial requirements; its impact on the social habits of every nation; and its safety imperatives

It involves aeronautics, avionics, economics, finance, information technology, legal principles and practice, materials science, meteorology, military strategy, and politics. In aeronautics, the concern is wholly with fixed- and rotary-winged vehicles, and with the air- and ground-support systems such aircraft need to operate. For military aircraft, there are special considerations relating to offence and defense. These considerations may involve the technologies related to communications, electronic counter- measures, flight guidance and control, fuel technology, life support and emergency evacuation, missiles, munitions, and navigation. For civilian aircraft, the aeronautical concerns are entirely with performance, safety, efficiency, and profitability. In such civil aircraft, the avionics technology is of the same kind as that used in military aircraft, but it is employed for different purposes.

Space activities are carried out:

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  to provide global telecommunications and entertainment;

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  for examining the climate and the physical resources of the earth by remote sensing; and

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  for furthering scientific knowledge.

The same space technology is used for military purposes: satellite launch vehicles, for example, have been developed from inter-continental ballistic missiles, and satellites can be used for espionage. Both aeronautical and space vehicles operate in controlled environments, that need complex operational organisations to function correctly.

Not to be involved in aviation at some level is currently impossible for any state. If a developing country, say, cannot gain access to advanced technology, it cannot overcome the impediments to its economic improvement. But the powerful (often unintended) forces of industrial and financial globalisation create such pressures in the worldwide aviation industry that existing national aviation companies face a difficult future if they are not yet involved in international collaboration. Those countries which have no aviation or related supporting educational and training programmes in place will find it difficult to contribute to future aviation development, even in so simple a matter as being a launch customer for a new aircraft type.

The global nature of aviation

The present world population of aircraft consists of the classes shown in Table I.

The majority of general aviation aircraft are located in the USA. Although product liability laws in effect in that country a few years back had a severe effect on the sales of new general aviation aircraft, recent legislation has caused the production of such aircraft to resume and remain an American strength. Since reasonable financial returns over research and development and production costs can only be obtained from large production runs, such general aviation aircraft have to be inexpensive and the market large. Such a market exists only in the USA.

The production of military aircraft is subject to political determination, but, at present, the military aviation needs of the world are satisfied by USA, CIS, and European aircraft. New combat aircrafts such as the Typhoon (the EFA), the F.22, and the JSF are all produced by collaborative effort. In transport terms, the C-130J, C-17, and the C-141 are the dominant types; the European FLA has just reached final agreement on the design and production requirements. Military helicopters such as the Apache, the Merlin (based on the EH 101) and the Eurocopter Tiger are available at present and are in service. The largest sector of aircraft procurement (in numbers, if not in value) is training aircraft. This sector is a very considerable one for future purchases throughout the world.

In considering civilian transport aircraft, it needs to be appreciated that passenger traffic has been growing since 1993 (until very recently when there occurred a downturn as a result of terrorism, war, and epidemics of viral disease) at over 5 per cent per annum. Figures from IATA indicate that airlines anticipate that growth rate to be re-established shortly, which means that annual domestic passenger traffic will increase from 1.29–10⁹ passengers in 1995 to 1.85–10⁹ passengers in 2006. In the same period it is believed that annual international passenger numbers will grow from 397–10⁶ to 540–10⁶. If a growth rate of just 5 per cent is assumed to obtain over the next 20 years then, to satisfy the demand, 18,500 new passenger aircraft will be required to be in service by 2015. When the costs of the engines, the ancillary equipment and the technical support associated with the acquisition of such a number of aircraft have been added it is predicted that the accumulated market value of these aerospace products over that period will be between $120 and $170 billion. Of the total number of aircraft required (10,000 additional and 8,500 replacement) about 5,450 will be wide-bodied, 4,350 single-aisled, 4,250 regional jets (with a seating capacity between 50 and 110), and about 4,450 turbo-props.

Future of UK aerospace

The UK aerospace industry has a share of the world market of about 20 per cent. Although it exports about 70 per cent of its products and services, it relies on collaboration, mostly with European partners. Despite this good position, however, Britain has a great concern for the future of its aeronautics industry and that of its European partners in the light of the dedicated aim of the government of the USA "to ensure (its) continued leadership in aeronautics" (US National Science and Technology Council paper, 1995).

Ten years back the Stollery committee considered future plans for the development and maintenance of the UK aerospace industry and proposed the creation of a National Strategic Technology Acquisition plan for aviation. This plan was founded on three categories of technology.

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  Formation – defined as those fundamental to the well-being of the UK aeronautics industry;

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  Enhancing – defined as those which would improve the effectiveness of the industry; and

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  Supporting – defined as those which sustain the industry.

Examples of these categories of technology are listed in Table II.

In addition, the government of UK established a Technology Foresight programme to look ahead for 20 years across 15 industrial sectors, of which aeronautics was one. Foresight assumed that the new technologies which the UK would need to acquire for its future well-being could be detected from perceived market requirements. Such technology acquisition, considered by Foresight, consists of three phases:

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  pure research,

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  strategic and applied research, and

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  technology demonstration.

Class of aircraft	Approximate numbers
General and lightAircraft	250,000
Civilian transport	18,000
Military aircraft	25,000
Rotary-wing aircraft	5,000
Table I Aircraft population by class

Examples of what might be appropriate to consider as pure, strategic and applied research are presented next.

For defense systems, such research involves mathematical modeling, simulation and synthetic environment technologies for the modeling of a modern battlefield. These same techniques can be used to study highly complex systems with many interactions which are only imperfectly understood, such as an air transportation system, which is usually taken as comprising:

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  airports,

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  aircraft, and

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  air traffic control.

These elements are necessary for the safe and economic transport of passengers, baggage, and cargo.

To achieve high performance in aeronautics world-class technological capabilities in materials, propulsion, and aerodynamics are required. The ability to produce low weight, high performance, and environmentally acceptable systems relies on improvements to materials and the associated manufacturing processes for structural and temperature-critical applications. To satisfy the requirements for efficiency, reduced noise and emissions requires advanced engine techniques and aerodynamic design. The Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC) has sponsored three projects intended to support acquisition of this type of technology. The projects are as follows.

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  The powered wing. With this, it is intended that the key elements of any wing design for a future large transport aircraft will be integrated. These elements include advanced structures, wing systems, landing gear, and powerplants.

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  Flight crew environment. In this project, avionics will be used to achieve the safety, cost-effectiveness and the mission effectiveness of the aircraft.

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  Ultra-reliable Aircraft. It is intended to have doubled by 2010 the reliability levels of military aircraft and, in the same period, to have increased the levels of reliability of civil aircraft by at least 50 per cent.

Cockpit technology

The use of glass cockpits to provide the necessary display of flight information to pilots is universal in new passenger aircraft and will be standard in all cockpits in the future. However, new methods for pilot control inputs are also probable. The most likely form of pilot input will be speech-based control in which a voice input system causes an appropriate control action to be executed in response to some spoken command. Every automatic speech recognition (ASR) system depends crucially on:

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  signal acquisition,

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  signal processing, and

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  pattern matching.

For aerospace applications, the key determinant of the performance of such a speech recogniser is its sentence recognition rate: isolated word recognition requires a pause of 100-250ms between spoken words, which is completely unacceptable for cockpit work.

Continuous speech recognition does not require any pauses, but the vocabulary required is considerable i.e. it requires 1,000-5,000 words. Speech recognisers always make mistakes. To provide assurance that the spoken command has resulted in the correct action requires, except for the simplest actions, that the pilot should be able to monitor the output of the recogniser, and to have some method of correcting any perceived error. The output can be presented aurally or visually. For simple commands, no output feedback is needed: if the situation has changed, the system has worked; if it has not, the command can be repeated. Almost every aspect of continuous speech recognition represents a considerable area of research for the application of this technology to the cockpit environment.

Category	Example
Formation	System integration, advanced wing design and manufacture, emissions limiting and control, aircraft and engine noise control, active controls and smart systems, advanced cockpit technology, rotary wing technology, low-cost manufacture and fibre composites
Enhancing	Real-time data fusion, low-visibility sensors, health and usage monitors, ice accretion modelling techniques and low-cost position sensing/reporting systems
Sustaining	Impact modelling techniques, knowledge- based systems, safety-critical software development, design and manufacture of smart systems, improved reliability and maintainability, integrated computer control of design and development and manufacture
Table II Technologies in UK National Strategic Technology plan

Another method of interfacing with flight and guidance computers is to use the position and orientation of the pilot's head. The instrumentation associated with such head- tracking is currently a relatively mature military technology involving helmet-mounted sights which use either mechanical linkages or magnetic sensors to provide measures of translation motion and head orientation. Further development of this technology may lead to its application in civilian transport aircraft, and its extensive use in military aircraft is likely to be carried out to such a degree that a virtual cockpit may be achieved. Although optical head-tracking is possible, its use in aircraft is limited because of its susceptibility to strong sunlight, which is particularly prevalent at high altitude. It is also prone to interfere at night with other cockpit systems which use infrared.

Air traffic management systems

An entirely new aerospace market sector is evolving at present and will be of considerable significance in the near future: satellite-based air traffic management (ATM) systems Table III. Such systems have been referred to as communication, navigation, and surveillance (CNS/ATM) systems or the future air navigation system (FANS).

Function	Segment	System equipment
Communications	Airborne	FMS, FANS-1 equipment, AMSS voice/data, VHF/HF transceivers, mode-S transponders, ADS, SATCOM antennas, GNSS, ARINC databuses
	Ground-based	VHF digital radio for voice/data, SATCOM ground stations, ATIS, weather systems, RDPS, FTPS, CPDLC, ATN/AMSS data/voice
Navigation and	Airborne	GPS/GLONASS, INS, MMR, DGPS, EGPWS, baro. altimetry
landing aids	Ground-based	MLS differential ground stations, SATCOM integrity monitoring
Surveillance	Airborne	ADS, CDIT, ACAS/TCAS
	Ground-based	Signal processors, displays and HMI tools, mode-S transponders

Table III Satellite-based ATM systems

There are two areas of great technological importance.

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  The space-based segment – this involves the development of a second generation of geostationary navigation satellites to replace the GPS/GLONASS constellation and also communication satellites to link ground-based information with the aircraft.

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  The corresponding avionic equipment for the aircraft.

IATA has estimated that the cost of providing a basic CNS/ATM avionics suite will range from $1 million for a wide-body jet to $200,000 for a commuter aircraft. Such a suite would allow the aircraft to be connected to the aircraft communications and reporting service (ACARS) network and a satellite positioning system datalink. Implementation of the wide area augmentation system (WAAS) by the FAA is nearly completed and will be followed shortly by the local area augmentation system (LAAS). These depend on the availability of a constellation of geostationary navigation satellites, Some indication of the scale of technology involved in the CNS/ATM market can be obtained from the study of Table III.

Conclusions

The importance of aviation to every nation and walk of life needs no emphasis, yet its maintenance, development and expansion continues to require highly skilled personnel, finance, and legislation throughout the world. The continual inter-play between technologies needed to accomplish air transportation requires a constant body of professional interest, and it is to assist such professionals, particularly in many areas in which measurement and control plays a considerable part, that the Aviation Panel of the Institute of Measurement and Control was established. Its brief was deliberately set wide to ensure that every aspect of modern aviation was considered so that the Institute could help in the progress of the world's most important transport system.

Donald McLeanChairman, Aviation Panel, Institute of Measurement and Control