Paramount Flies New Light-Attack Airplane in South Africa

South African defense company Paramount reported on August 13 the first flight of its Advanced High-performance Reconnaissance Light Air Craft (AHRLAC). The twin-boom, tandem-seat, pusher-prop design, powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-66B turboprop, has been under development since September 2011. It flew from Wonderboom airbase and will be followed into the air by a second prototype for mission systems and weapons testing.

Paramount said that thanks to its pod system design, the AHRLAC can perform tasks that “previously required four separately configured aircraft…or complex unmanned aerial surveillance systems.” The tasks include close air support, cargo transport, training and surveillance.

As well as Pratt & Whitney Canada, Cobham and Zeiss are key suppliers to the project. Martin-Baker’s lightweight Mk 17 ejection seats will be fitted. But Paramount emphasizes that the AHRLAC is an all-African design. “Leading-edge defense solutions like AHRLAC present African states with the opportunity to build up their own intelligence, militaries and national police to combat the continent’s insurgents and extremists,” said Paramount Group executive chairman Ivor Ichikowitz. In 2010, this South African industrialist separately created the Ichikowitz Family Foundation to foster various environmental and educational causes in Africa.

Dr. Paul Potgieter, CEO of AHRLAC Holdings, noted that the aircraft was assembled from computer-designed, pre-drilled and machine-made parts, without the need for jigs. “We have made all the tools for production for all sheet-metal pressings and composite parts so it enables us to hit production much more quickly than other aircraft,” he said. “AHRLAC is creating the next generation of engineers on the continent,” he added.

No orders have been announced yet. The AHRLAC is likely to compete with established designs such as the Beechcraft AT-6, Embraer EMB-314 Super Tucano and Pilatus PC-21, and possibly with another new private venture, the Textron Airland Scorpion twinjet.

Iceland volcano not a concern for UK airspace, says aviation watchdog

Britain's aviation watchdog has played down fears that a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland could stop flights across Europe, saying there is no prospect of a blanket closure of airspace in the event of an eruption.

Earthquakes of magnitude 5.3 and 5.1, the biggest since tremors started last week, were recorded early on Sundayday near the Bárðarbunga volcano. A decision on Saturday by Icelandic authorities to raise the warning code for airlines to the highest level has fuelled concern that an eruption could ground planes across Europe as volcanic ash clouds did in 2010 and 2011.

On Sunday Iceland lowered its aviation alert level from red to orange, signalling a volcanic eruption remained possible in coming days but was not imminent.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said it would not close UK airspace in the event of an eruption. New guidelines and advances in the detection of ash and better understanding of its risks mean volcanic clouds similar to those seen at the start of the decade would no longer have a significant impact on air travel in Europe, although a bigger eruption could disrupt schedules in affected areas.

Under new guidelines, the Met Office will identify specific areas of ash. Planes will be allowed to fly through low density ash – up to 2mg per cubic metre of air – which has been deemed safe by engine manufacturers since 2010. At medium density – 2mg-4mg per cubic metre – airlines can operate if they have agreed a safety case with the CAA, as many already do. Even in areas of predicted higher densities, airlines could continue to operate if they can demonstrate to the regulator they have robust risk mitigation measures and additional safety procedures.

In 2010, ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano led to the closure of much of Europe's airspace for six days, cancelling more than 100,000 flights and disrupting travel for more than 10 million people. Holidaymakers were stranded and many imports, such as fresh vegetables, disappeared from supermarket shelves. The cost was estimated at more than £1bn. The second eruption, in 2011, caused less severe disruption.

A small area of airspace above the Bárðarbunga volcano that had been closed reopened on Sundayday. The region has been evacuated. Iceland's met office said it had concluded that there had not been a small lava eruption under the glacier. So far, no ash has been emitted. The office said seismic activity at the volcano was not slowing, with the downgraded level of alert to orange signalling "heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption."

The CAA said it would issue a notice to airlines should an ash cloud form but it would not close airspace. Individual airlines will decide where to fly.

EasyJet said there would be no change to its schedules. It has been successfully testing a volcanic ash detection system for aircraft in recent years which it is planning to fit to its fleet.

British Airways said: "We're just monitoring the situation closely. All the indications are it wouldn't be a repeat of 2010."

Guidelines have been modified since 2010, when BA's chief executive, Willie Walsh, condemned the closure as a "gross overreaction" and flew a test plane into the ash cloud to prove his point.

A CAA spokesman said: "There have been great changes since 2010 and a huge amount of work done. If we have the same amount of ash as in 2010 there would be no realistic impact. It really depends how dense the ash is – if, of course, the volcano does erupt."

Brain Monitoring May Improve Pilots, Controllers

Billion-dollar, decade-long initiatives in the U.S. and Europe to map and simulate the entire human brain will change information technology fundamentally, and aerospace is unlikely to remain untouched. Advances in neurotechnology are already having an impact, as methods of monitoring the brain are applied to improving the performance of pilots, air traffic controllers and system operators.

“We are already seeing promising results from initial studies,” says Santosh Mathan, principal scientist at Honeywell Labs in Seattle. “A lot of our work focuses on neural sensing—sensing brain activity—with the aim of improving human performance.

“We are in this line of research because our technology is used in challenging task contexts—systems that support soldiers, or pilots in advanced flight decks,” he says. “Computers are being adopted in unconventional settings, but humans always remain a crucial component, and there are many vulnerabilities of humans that can cause the whole system to fail.”

Areas of concern include information overload. “You can overwhelm a person with processing so much information that they are unable to perform the task,” Mathan says. Another is attention. “Are we creating systems that allow our users to stay engaged and remain a critical part of the system, or are they outside the loop and contributing to the system failing?”

Designing systems without considering human limitations can have several consequences, he says. For operators these include higher training costs and loss of efficiency and safety. For manufacturers they include higher certification and support costs.

Tools now used to make sure system designs have a low impact on users tend to involve behavioral observation, Mathan says—putting people in a realistic task context, observing their performance and making an inference about how effective the system is. This is time-consuming, requires domain experts and can be costly.

“We use subjective ratings a lot. Pilots use the system and provide a questionnaire response, but there are all kinds of biases related to retrospection, sensitivities about what you disclose, and these subjective issues get in the way,” he says. “So we are interested in tools that are objective, automated, fine-grained and can give us insight into the cognitive state of the user as they interact with the systems we design.”

Research shows brain activity can be a source of this information, Mathan says. Examples include functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain of an individual performing low- and high-difficulty tasks. Many more regions of the brain are active during a difficult task. “When performing a task that is familiar and well-practiced, the regions active are just those necessary to perform the motor aspects of the job. It’s all automated. But the moment it is unfamiliar or more difficult, there is a lot more reasoning happening,” he says. But clinical imaging equipment used for this research is impractical for system development, so work has centered on obtaining brain-activity information with sensors that are more practical. “Our efforts have focused on using EEG [electroencephalography] technology as the basis for making inferences about cognitive state,” Mathan says.

As currents flow through the billions of neurons in the brain they set up electrical fields, and voltages associated with these can be detected at the surface of the scalp. “You can sense those minor voltage fluctuations and make some inferences about what’s going on inside the brain,” he says.

Ten years ago, a lab system resembled a swim cap with many electrodes and wires, making it difficult for the test subject to move. “We are beginning to see and use systems that are much more practical,” Mathan says. A wireless EEG system from Advanced Brain Monitoring (ABM), for example, has the circuitry integrated into thin plastic strips and fits under a helmet. 

brain-monitoring-may-improve-pilots-controllers

http://aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/brain-monitoring-may-improve-pilots-controllers

DIGITAL TWINS

Multi-physics numerical simulation will be key to analyzing and optimizing unconventional configurations like MIT’s D8. Credit: MIT

Korean Air Flies A380 To Paris

Korean Air is upgrading it service between Seoul Incheon International Airport and Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport with the commencement of Airbus A380 service. The carrier’s A380, equipped with 12 suites in first class and 94 lie-flat seats in business class, replaced the 291-seat Boeing 777-300 aircraft previously used on the route, boosting the route’s total capacity by 40 percent. Korean Air currently operates eight A380s, with plans to add two more of the double-decker aircraft to its fleet by the end of the year.

digital twin

It is 2035, and a customer is taking delivery of not only a new aircraft but also a highly detailed digital model specific to that aircraft’s tail number—its airframe, engines and systems. 

Built up over the course of design, development, testing and production, and ultra-realistic down to the level of unique manufacturing flaws, the model will accompany the aircraft throughout its service life. Mirroring its flights exactly, the model’s simulations will be compared with data from the real aircraft to identify anomalies, predict maintenance needs and forecast remaining life.

The “digital twin” is one effort under way to push computational engineering tools to new levels of capability, from model-based design through virtual prototyping and flight testing, to simulation-based certification. To achieve the vision will require substantial government and industry investment in advancing and integrating design tools such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for aerodynamics and finite element modeling (FEM) for structures.