Off-Nominal Performance and Reliability of Novel Aircraft Concepts During Early Design

What is it about?

The safety risks of novel aircraft concepts is less understood. This is primarily due to two reasons - 1) Less experience and knowledge about failure modes and scenarios, and 2) Less data to quantify the probability of such failures. This article proposes a method to overcome these shortcomings by utilizing system performance models to identify and characterize safety critical scenarios. To address the uncertainty with probability data, a Bayesian framework is proposed that utilizes subject matter expert knowledge and available data and can be continuously updated as more data become available. A case study on the NASA X-57 Distributed Electric Propulsion Aircraft is provided as an example.

Featured Image

Photo by Richard Horvath on Unsplash

Photo by Richard Horvath on Unsplash