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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1995

Computer-Aided Air-Traffic Control In The Terminal Area

Developmental computer-aided system for automated management and control of arrival traffic at large airport includes three integrated subsystems. One subsystem, called Traffic Management Advisor, another subsystem, called Descent Advisor, and third subsystem, called Final Approach Spacing Tool. Data base that includes current wind measurements and mathematical models of performances of types of aircraft contributes to effective operation of system.

Erzberger, Heinz↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Micro-grid for Future Planetary Surface Needs

Under the current Artemis Program, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will send its next set of astronauts (first woman and next man) to the Moon by 2024 and establish a sustainable presence on the lunar surface by 2028. The challenge of creating a sustained lunar surface presence is significantly different than previous efforts. Lunar surface operations will require access to continuous and highly reliable power to support mission needs, such as to support ISRU operations. Adding to this challenge, the lunar surface operations are not going to be established over a single effort, rather the system and operations will evolve and grow over time (years). The first initial loads that arrive on the lunar surface will be integrated to their own dedicated power sources. As the lunar surface operations grow, so will the demand for power and at some point these individual loads will require more power than can be generated with any single power device. This power demand drives the need for inter-connecting the loads and power devices to share power between them, resulting in a micro-grid. One of the advantages of developing a lunar surface micro-grid is that allows lunar surface operations to resemble electrical utility operations on Earth; it allows power to be generated where it is convenient and allows power to be consumed where it is convenient, rather than negotiating between generation and consumption. The micro-grid concept also provides another benefit of affording the ability to increase overall system reliability by integrating dissimilar power generation and energy storage devices together, for example modifying the power generation strategy to include both solar arrays and nuclear. Creating a lunar surface micro-grid has its advantages, however there are significant challenges associated with an evolvable micro-grid concept. The challenges include how to efficiently transmit large amounts of power (10kW+) long distances (1kW+), how to effectively integrate dissimilar power generation and energy storage devices to maximize power consumption and minimize downtime, and how to physically connect these devices together with a connector that can survive the lunar environment (dust, extreme cold temperatures) and is capable of both astronaut and robotic operation. The basic components of the micro-grid have to be designed to ensure the system is sustainable, modular, and reconfigurable. An interface to the micro-grid has to be designed that allows for additional technologies, some of which may not yet be fully designed, to easily integrate into the micro-grid concept. This presentation discusses these lunar challenges in some more depth and offers a path forward in designing an evolvable micro-grid to meet the needs of the lunar surface operations and proposes a Universal Micro-grid Interface Converter to connect these dissimilar power sources and mission loads to the micro-grid.

Jeffrey Csank↗
NASA NTRS2018

Air Traffic Management Technology Demostration-1 (ATD-1) Avionics Phase 2 Flight Test and Results

NASA’s first Air Traffic Management Technology Demonstration (ATD-1) subproject successfully completed 19 days of flight test validation in January and February 2017 of an Interval Management (IM) avionics prototype and the procedures used to conduct IM arrival and approach operations. IM is one of the three elements integrated into NASA’s ATD-1 concept of operations with the subproject goal of improving aircraft efficiency and airport throughput during high-density arrival operations. The ATD-1 concept of operations combines advanced arrival scheduling, controller decision support tools, and interval management (IM) avionics to enable merging of multiple, time-based, efficient arrival streams. IM contributes to the operation by calculating speeds that enable an aircraft to precisely achieve a specific time or distance behind another aircraft. When precise spacing intervals can be calculated, achieved, and then maintained during high-density operations, aircraft efficiency should be improved by enabling the aircraft to remain closer to the optimum descent trajectory instead of using vectors and step-down altitudes, and airport throughput should be maintained or improved by each aircraft arriving at the runway threshold closer to the assigned spacing interval. This avionics development and flight test was conducted under a NASA contract by Boeing Research and Technology, with Boeing Commercial Aircraft, Honeywell, United Airlines, and Jeppesen as sub-contractors. The Honeywell built IM avionics were the first ever prototype built based on NASA requirements as well as developing and non-flight tested international IM standards, integrated into two test aircraft, and then flown in real-world conditions at the Grant County International Airport (KMWH). The IM prototype flown in the flight test used data from the Ownship and the assigned lead, or Target, aircraft to calculate the airspeed necessary for the Ownship to achieve the desired spacing. The flight test demonstrated that the IM avionics prototype generally met the IM requirement for spacing accuracy. However, the control laws implemented require further development to reduce the high IM speed command rate and the number of speed reversals observed during the test. Pilots assessed the IM procedure as acceptable, and issues requiring further attention were identified. In summary, the IM avionics prototype showed significant promise in contributing to the goals of improving aircraft efficiency and airport throughput. The flight test results also provided important data to the FAA and the working group developing the follow-on version of the international IM standards.

Baxley, Brian T.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Air Traffic Management Technology Demonstration-1 Concept of Operations (ATD-1 ConOps), Version 2.0

This document is an update to the operations and procedures envisioned for NASA s Air Traffic Management (ATM) Technology Demonstration #1 (ATD-1). The ATD-1 Concept of Operations (ConOps) integrates three NASA technologies to achieve high throughput, fuel-efficient arrival operations into busy terminal airspace. They are Traffic Management Advisor with Terminal Metering (TMA-TM) for precise time-based schedules to the runway and points within the terminal area, Controller-Managed Spacing (CMS) decision support tools for terminal controllers to better manage aircraft delay using speed control, and Flight deck Interval Management (FIM) avionics and flight crew procedures to conduct airborne spacing operations. The ATD-1 concept provides de-conflicted and efficient operations of multiple arrival streams of aircraft, passing through multiple merge points, from top-of-descent (TOD) to the Final Approach Fix. These arrival streams are Optimized Profile Descents (OPDs) from en route altitude to the runway, using primarily speed control to maintain separation and schedule. The ATD-1 project is currently addressing the challenges of integrating the three technologies, and their implantation into an operational environment. The ATD-1 goals include increasing the throughput of high-density airports, reducing controller workload, increasing efficiency of arrival operations and the frequency of trajectory-based operations, and promoting aircraft ADS-B equipage.

Baxley, Brian T.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Regional Training Program: Promoting Undergraduate Minority Persistence in Nuclear Physics (RTP: PUMP-NP)

A total of two cohorts of research experience were conducted under this grant. The first year of the program in which a cohort of six students were recruited from three Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). These students travelled to Durham, NC in summer to participate in this program. Prior to their arrival, the students participated in an orientation in which they selected from a choice of topics for summer research and were paired up with mentors from Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL). The participants of the program were integrated with the larger cohort of summer students who had arrived at TUNL as part of other programs, such as the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU).

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1993

On-board closed-loop congestion control for satellite based packet switching networks

NASA LeRC is currently investigating a satellite architecture that incorporates on-board packet switching capability. Because of the statistical nature of packet switching, arrival traffic may fluctuate and thus it is necessary to integrate congestion control mechanism as part of the on-board processing unit. This study focuses on the closed-loop reactive control. We investigate the impact of the long propagation delay on the performance and propose a scheme to overcome the problem. The scheme uses a global feedback signal to regulate the packet arrival rate of ground stations. In this scheme, the satellite continuously broadcasts the status of its output buffer and the ground stations respond by selectively discarding packets or by tagging the excessive packets as low-priority. The two schemes are evaluated by theoretical queuing analysis and simulation. The former is used to analyze the simplified model and to determine the basic trends and bounds, and the later is used to assess the performance of a more realistic system and to evaluate the effectiveness of more sophisticated control schemes. The results show that the long propagation delay makes the closed-loop congestion control less responsive. The broadcasted information can only be used to extract statistical information. The discarding scheme needs carefully-chosen status information and reduction function, and normally requires a significant amount of ground discarding to reduce the on-board packet loss probability. The tagging scheme is more effective since it tolerates more uncertainties and allows a larger margin of error in status information. It can protect the high-priority packets from excessive loss and fully utilize the downlink bandwidth at the same time.

Chu, Pong P.↗
NASA NTRS2014

Precision Arrival Scheduling for Tactical Reconfiguration

This research adapts the concept of precision arrival scheduling to accommodate reconfiguration operations between two sets of fixed arrival routes modeled for Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD). Integrated fixed path routing from en-route to runways was modeled for ORD's top two peak traffic configurations, as well as transition routing between the two configurations. A first-come-first-served multi-point scheduler was adapted to the reconfiguration problem by prioritizing the rescheduling of aircraft within the terminal airspace at the time of reconfiguration notification. Arrival rescheduling was then tested for a range of arrival rates and reconfiguration notification lead-times in fasttime simulation. Reconfigurations with lead-times as short as 10 minutes at a nominal static configuration arrival rate (~25 arrivals per quarter hour) could be accommodated with little impact to throughput. However, as lead-time shortened below 25 minutes, individual aircraft efficiency quickly degraded due to extra flight time at lower altitude and speed. In general, first-come-first-served arrival scheduling on fixed routing for this sample reconfiguration problem is promising if at least 10-15 minutes lead-time is given before the reconfiguration is in effect.

airport reconfiguration↗
NASA NTRS1993

Analysis and sizing of Mars aerobrake structure

A cone-sphere aeroshell structure for aerobraking into Martian atmosphere is studied. Using this structural configuration, a space frame load-bearing structure is proposed. To generate this structure efficiently and to perform a variety of studies of several configurations, a mesh generator that utilizes only a few configurational parameters is developed. A finite element analysis program that analyzes space frame structures was developed. A sizing algorithm that arrives at a minimum mass configuration was developed and integrated into the finite element analysis program. A typical 135-ft-diam aerobrake configuration was analyzed and sized. The minimum mass obtained in this study using high modulus graphite/epoxy composite material members is compared with the masses obtained from two other aerobrake structures using lightweight erectable tetrahedral truss and part-spherical truss configurations. Excellent agreement for the minimum mass was obtained with the three different aerobrake structures. Also, the minimum mass using the present structure was obtained when the supports were not at the base but at about 75 percent of the base diameter.

Raju, I. S.↗
NASA NTRS2014

Interval Management Display Design Study

In 2012, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimated that U.S. commercial air carriers moved 736.7 million passengers over 822.3 billion revenue-passenger miles. The FAA also forecasts, in that same report, an average annual increase in passenger traffic of 2.2 percent per year for the next 20 years, which approximates to one-and-a-half times the number of today's aircraft operations and passengers by the year 2033. If airspace capacity and throughput remain unchanged, then flight delays will increase, particularly at those airports already operating near or at capacity. Therefore it is critical to create new and improved technologies, communications, and procedures to be used by air traffic controllers and pilots. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the FAA, and the aviation industry are working together to improve the efficiency of the National Airspace System and the cost to operate in it in several ways, one of which is through the creation of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). NextGen is intended to provide airspace users with more precise information about traffic, routing, and weather, as well as improve the control mechanisms within the air traffic system. NASA's Air Traffic Management Technology Demonstration-1 (ATD-1) Project is designed to contribute to the goals of NextGen, and accomplishes this by integrating three NASA technologies to enable fuel-efficient arrival operations into high-density airports. The three NASA technologies and procedures combined in the ATD-1 concept are advanced arrival scheduling, controller decision support tools, and aircraft avionics to enable multiple time deconflicted and fuel efficient arrival streams in high-density terminal airspace.

Baxley, Brian T.↗
NASA NTRS2014

Timing Studies of X Persei and the Discovery of Its Transient Quasi-periodic Oscillation Feature

We present a timing analysis of X Persei (X Per) using observations made between 1998 and 2010 with the Proportional Counter Array (PCA) onboard the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) and with the INTEGRAL Soft Gamma-Ray Imager (ISGRI). All pulse arrival times obtained from the RXTE-PCA observations are phase-connected and a timing solution is obtained using these arrival times. We update the long-term pulse frequency history of the source by measuring its pulse frequencies using RXTE-PCA and ISGRI data. From the RXTEPCA data, the relation between the frequency derivative and X-ray flux suggests accretion via the companion's stellar wind. However, the detection of a transient quasi-periodic oscillation feature, peaking at approximately 0.2 Hz, suggests the existence of an accretion disc. We find that doublebreak models fit the average power spectra well, which suggests that the source has at least two different accretion flow components dominating the overall flow. From the power spectrum of frequency derivatives, we measure a power-law index of approximately − 1, which implies that, on short time-scales, disc accretion dominates over noise, while on time-scales longer than the viscous time-scales, the noise dominates. From pulse profiles, we find a correlation between the pulse fraction and the count rate of the source.

accretion↗
NASA NTRS2017

NASA's Space Launch System Takes Shape

Major hardware and software for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) began rolling off assembly lines in 2016, setting the stage for critical testing in 2017 and the launch of a major new capability for deep space human exploration. SLS continues to pursue a 2018 first launch of Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1). At NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans, LA, Boeing completed welding of structural test and flight liquid hydrogen tanks, and engine sections. Test stands for core stage structural tests at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL. neared completion. The B2 test stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center, MS, completed major structural renovation to support core stage green run testing in 2018. Orbital ATK successfully test fired its second qualification solid rocket motor in the Utah desert and began casting the motor segments for EM-1. Aerojet Rocketdyne completed its series of test firings to adapt the heritage RS-25 engine to SLS performance requirements. Production is under way on the first five new engine controllers. NASA also signed a contract with Aerojet Rocketdyne for propulsion of the RL10 engines for the Exploration Upper Stage. United Launch Alliance delivered the structural test article for the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage to MSFC for tests and construction was under way on the flight stage. Flight software testing at MSFC, including power quality and command and data handling, was completed. Substantial progress is planned for 2017. Liquid oxygen tank production will be completed at Michoud. Structural testing at Marshall will get under way. RS-25 hotfire testing will verify the new engine controllers. Core stage horizontal integration will begin. The core stage pathfinder mockup will arrive at the B2 test stand for fit checks and tests. EUS will complete preliminary design review. This paper will discuss the technical and programmatic successes and challenges of 2016 and look ahead to plans for 2017.

Askins, Bruce↗
NASA NTRS2018

Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 (ATD-2): Integrated Arrival/Departure/Surface (IADS) System Demonstration, Technology Transfer Document Summary (ReadMe)

Airspace Technology Demonstration - 2 (ATD-2) is part of NASA's Airspace Technology Demonstrations (ATD) Project under its Airspace Operations and Safety Program (AOSP). ATD-2 is a multi-year research and development effort to improve the predictability and the operational efficiency of the air traffic system in metroplex environments, through the enhancement, development, and integration of the nation's most advanced and sophisticated arrival, departure, and surface prediction, scheduling, and management systems. In order to ensure that the products of this knowledge and technology transfer are relevant and useful, NASA has created strong partnerships with the FAA and key industry stakeholders. This summary document and accompanying artifacts satisfy the first of three Research Transition Products (RTPs) defined in the IADS Research Transition Team (RTT) Plan. This transfer consists of NASA's ATD-2 Phase 1 Baseline IADS System capabilities.

IADS↗
NASA NTRS2014

Functional Analysis for an Integrated Capability of Arrival/Departure/Surface Management with Tactical Runway Management

The runway is a critical resource of any air transport system. It is used for arrivals, departures, and for taxiing aircraft and is universally acknowledged as a constraining factor to capacity for both surface and airspace operations. It follows that investigation of the effective use of runways, both in terms of selection and assignment as well as the timing and sequencing of the traffic is paramount to the efficient traffic flows. Both the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and NASA have developed concepts and tools to improve atomic aspects of coordinated arrival/departure/surface management operations and runway configuration management. In December 2012, NASA entered into a Collaborative Agreement with DLR. Four collaborative work areas were identified, one of which is called "Runway Management." As part of collaborative research in the "Runway Management" area, which is conducted with the DLR Institute of Flight Guidance, located in Braunschweig, the goal is to develop an integrated system comprised of the three DLR tools - arrival, departure, and surface management (collectively referred to as A/D/S-MAN) - and NASA's tactical runway configuration management (TRCM) tool. To achieve this goal, it is critical to prepare a concept of operations (ConOps) detailing how the NASA runway management and DLR arrival, departure, and surface management tools will function together to the benefit of each. To assist with the preparation of the ConOps, the integrated NASA and DLR tools are assessed through a functional analysis method described in this report. The report first provides the highlevel operational environments for air traffic management (ATM) in Germany and in the U.S., and the descriptions of the DLR's A/D/S-MAN and NASA's TRCM tools at the level of details necessary to compliment the purpose of the study. Functional analyses of each tool and a completed functional analysis of an integrated system design are presented next in the report. Future efforts to fully develop the ConOps will include: developing scenarios to fully test environmental, procedural, and data availability assumptions; executing the analysis by a walk-through of the integrated system using these scenarios; defining the appropriate role of operators in terms of their monitoring requirements and decision authority; executing the analysis by a walk-through of the integrated system with operator involvement; characterizing the environmental, system data requirements, and operator role assumptions for the ConOps.

Phojanamongkolkij, Nipa↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Preliminary Design of an 'Autonomous Medical Response Agent' Interface Prototype for Long Duration Spaceflight

Major challenges for astronauts in future long-duration exploration missions (LDEMs) will be that crewmembers are not expected to be medical professionals, may be under high workload and stress, are facing physiological challenges caused by spaceflight, and will have limited, delayed voice communications with medical support from Earth. An autonomous medical response agent (AMRA) is envisioned to help astronauts address medical complaints, develop a differential diagnosis, and guide self-treatment until a healthy state is restored. AMRA develops a process of personalized diagnosis and treatment through a Bayesian predictive control system that recommends therapeutic control actions including diagnostic tests and treatments to crewmembers (Menon, 2020). The Human Computer Interaction (HCI) lab from NASA Ames Research Center’s Human Systems Integration Division (Code TH) has collaborated with Nahlia Inc in human-centered design augmentation research for AMRA. The project, titled Design of ‘Autonomous Medical Response Agent Interface Prototype for Long Duration Spaceflight, has been funded by the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) and introduces an interactive user-interface prototype that guides astronauts through self-diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation while communicating with remote specialists in ground support (most notably a patient’s flight surgeon). Our project develops the interaction design for the crewmember using AMRA through user research, iterative design, and usability testing to evaluate the user interface and workflow designed. The interface design deliverable for this project, titled AMRA Aggregate Information Display (AMRA AID) is an integrated information display system for comprehensive autonomous medical guidance, diagnosis, and treatment of in-flight medical conditions experienced by crewmembers. AMRA AID demonstrates how we might ensure crew autonomy, increase the crew’s medical capabilities, and decrease cognitive burden within a front-end user interface. AMRA AID refrains from relying on input from ground or mission control for self-treatment of medical issues—though ground awareness and communication with ground is maintained as a means of ensuring trust between mission control and crew. AMRA AID demonstrates how the crew’s on-board medical system might integrate with information from vehicle monitoring and crew schedule, without assuming causal relationships. AMRA AID’s comprehensive view enables efficient information access for both crew and ground support, reducing cognitive burden in the event of an unplanned or emergency medical incident and enabling informed analytical decisions to be made based on both crew and vehicle health. Human-centered design augmentation advanced within the prototype included: enhanced workflow and treatment guidance for two medical scenarios for a non-specialist user base with various levels of medical training, interaction design which considered speech (conversational user interface) elements and on-screen interactions to be developed in future iterations of the project, communication design and functional requirements relevant to self-care versus caring for another astronaut, as well as user testing of the prototype with an international space medical community. This project arrives at critical findings regarding usability needs, communication requirements, and integrated information requirements for a future technology interface functioning to increase confidence between ground support and LDEM crewmembers.

TRISH↗
NASA NTRS2020

Neighbors on the Red Planet: Mars Science Laboratory Relay Coordination Post InSight Arrival

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) strategic communications planning toolset selects orbiter relay opportunities that the rover will use for transmitting data back to Earth. The toolset was extensively reworked in preparation for the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport's (InSight) arrival at Mars in November 2018 and the regular use of Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) and Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) orbiters as relay assets in addition to Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and 2001 Mars Odyssey (ODY). Overflight selection criteria was automated in the new toolset to take into account overflight deconfliction and down-selection as well as tactical timeline planning impacts and total data return. This was done while remaining flexible and configurable for changing mission priorities. As the Curiosity rover ages, the MSL planning team must overcome issues such as reduced budgets, memory bank anomalies, and reduced power availability. These are some examples of factors that affect the strategic communications planning toolset. In addition to adapting to evolving internal mission needs, the toolset must also be flexible to changes in the relay planning interface with other landers. The concept of shared relay or “split passes” was introduced when InSight began operating on Mars just 600 kilometers away and at the same longitude as MSL. This proximity meant that orbiters could now communicate with two landers during the same relay session. Over time, this new operational use-case became common practice as InSight and MSL settled into relay planning negotiations. Today, many TGO relay sessions are shared between MSL and InSight. As more orbiters pursue integrating this capability into nominal relay operations, and more landers arrive on Mars, the strategic communications process and toolsets increases in complexity. Development of a single tool that schedules relay sessions for all orbiters and landers simultaneously may become necessary as the number of Martian spacecraft increases. Examples of how toolset selection criteria and capabilities have helped or hindered MSL planning will be presented. Ongoing improvements to MSL toolsets and processes, as well as to shared relay tools such as Mars Relay Operations Service (MaROS) and General Telecom Predictor (GTP) are also discussed in this paper. Examples of how toolset selection criteria and capabilities have helped or hindered MSL planning will be presented. Ongoing improvements to MSL toolsets and processes, as well as to shared relay tools such as Mars Relay Operations Service (MaROS) and General Telecom Predictor (GTP) are also discussed in this paper.

Vandermey, Nancy↗
DOE OSTI2024

An explainable variational autoencoder model for three-dimensional acoustic emission source localization in hollow cylindrical structures

We introduce an explainable variational autoencoder for three-dimensional (3D) localization of acoustic emission sources in hollow cylindrical structures, with an unsupervised approach. This research capitalizes on multi-arrival waveforms generated by helical path propagation in cylindrical geometries to enable efficient two-receiver localization. By integrating the modal characteristics of Lamb modes under multi-path conditions, we demonstrate that two sets of time-of-arrival differences and peak amplitudes extracted from one receiver can serve as effective localization features. This initial approach identifies four potential source locations, highlighting the feasibility of two-receiver source localization using traditional feature extraction methods. However, direct extraction can be challenging when mode overlaps occur, complicating the localization process. To address this, our work proposes a novel waveform-based method. This method leverages the consistent dispersion characteristics within isotropic materials, where each unique combination of mode arrival times and peak amplitudes constructs a distinct waveform. This distinctiveness overcomes the ambiguities associated with mode overlaps, significantly enhancing the method’s precision and robustness. Our approach adopts a data-driven strategy for waveform-based localization using variational autoencoder (VAE). VAE discerns waveform patterns for localization, while also addressing data uncertainties. The VAE’s encoder and decoder networks capture the localization process and the source’s influence on waveform generation, respectively, guiding latent variables to segregate waveforms by source in the latent space. The design of the learning process focuses on specific localization characteristics to enhance result explainability. Localization predictions are generated by projecting test waveforms, not included in the training set, onto a trained latent space. The prediction is determined using a nearest-neighbor approach based on the closest latent representation of a source. Validation with pencil-lead-break tests on a metallic pipe confirmed our method’s effectiveness, achieving an averaged 3D localization accuracy of 0.84.

Lee, Guan-Wei↗
NASA NTRS2016

Separation Assurance and Scheduling Coordination in the Arrival Environment

Separation assurance (SA) automation has been proposed as either a ground-based or airborne paradigm. The arrival environment is complex because aircraft are being sequenced and spaced to the arrival fix. This paper examines the effect of the allocation of the SA and scheduling functions on the performance of the system. Two coordination configurations between an SA and an arrival management system are tested using both ground and airborne implementations. All configurations have a conflict detection and resolution (CD&R) system and either an integrated or separated scheduler. Performance metrics are presented for the ground and airborne systems based on arrival traffic headed to Dallas/ Fort Worth International airport. The total delay, time-spacing conformance, and schedule conformance are used to measure efficiency. The goal of the analysis is to use the metrics to identify performance differences between the configurations that are based on different function allocations. A surveillance range limitation of 100 nmi and a time delay for sharing updated trajectory intent of 30 seconds were implemented for the airborne system. Overall, these results indicate that the surveillance range and the sharing of trajectories and aircraft schedules are important factors in determining the efficiency of an airborne arrival management system. These parameters are not relevant to the ground-based system as modeled for this study because it has instantaneous access to all aircraft trajectories and intent. Creating a schedule external to the CD&R and the scheduling conformance system was seen to reduce total delays for the airborne system, and had a minor effect on the ground-based system. The effect of an external scheduler on other metrics was mixed.

function allocation↗
NASA NTRS1995

TRACON Aircraft Arrival Planning and Optimization Through Spatial Constraint Satisfaction

A new aircraft arrival planning and optimization algorithm has been incorporated into the Final Approach Spacing Tool (FAST) in the Center-TRACON Automation System (CTAS) developed at NASA-Ames Research Center. FAST simulations have been conducted over three years involving full-proficiency, level five air traffic controllers from around the United States. From these simulations an algorithm, called Spatial Constraint Satisfaction, has been designed, coded, undergone testing, and soon will begin field evaluation at the Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver International airport facilities. The purpose of this new design is an attempt to show that the generation of efficient and conflict free aircraft arrival plans at the runway does not guarantee an operationally acceptable arrival plan upstream from the runway -information encompassing the entire arrival airspace must be used in order to create an acceptable aircraft arrival plan. This new design includes functions available previously but additionally includes necessary representations of controller preferences and workload, operationally required amounts of extra separation, and integrates aircraft conflict resolution. As a result, the Spatial Constraint Satisfaction algorithm produces an optimized aircraft arrival plan that is more acceptable in terms of arrival procedures and air traffic controller workload. This paper discusses the current Air Traffic Control arrival planning procedures, previous work in this field, the design of the Spatial Constraint Satisfaction algorithm, and the results of recent evaluations of the algorithm.

Bergh, Christopher P.↗