DRF Intern Highlights
Interns are a large part of our success at NASA. Let's take a look at the important work and contributions these students have made to the Data & Reasoning Fabric project.
Aeronautics↗
SEARCH · Engineering Papers
Results for “AAM”
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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DRF - Meet the Team
Introduction of DRF team members and is in conjunction with the Data and Reasoning Fabric (DRF) Project, and can be reviewed in the related records.
Aeronautics↗
Data and Reasoning Fabric (DRF)
DRF helps realize the full potential of future air mobility to advance human society. This information discovery and exchange ecosystem enables the transportation of people and cargo to places previously not served or underserved by aviation.
Aeronautics↗
DRF - Additional Concepts
DRF helps realize the full potential of future air mobility to advance human society. This information discovery and exchange ecosystem enables the transportation of people and cargo to places previously not served or under served by aviation.
Aeronautics↗
NASA’s Secured Airspace for Urban Air Mobility (UAM)
The Urban Air Mobility (UAM) architecture is leveraged from the Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) concept of operations. Within the UAM environment, UAM operators work collaboratively to manage aerial vehicles in the urban environment. Providers of Services for UAM (PSU), UAM operators, and Supplemental Data Service Providers (SDSP) provide services to support flight operations within that environment. As a recognized need, various views of UAM flight information are provided to the public and public safety entities. To accomplish this, among other goals, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can coordinate flight information between the FAA controlled National Airspace System (NAS) and the UAM environments through the FAA-Industry Data Exchange Protocol (FIDXP). This concept of UAM proposes to develop short-range, point-to-point transportation systems in metropolitan areas using vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) or short take-off and landing (STOL) aircraft to overcome increasing surface congestion. To garner the support of UAM and to realize its potential, an assurance of cybersecurity is critical for public acceptance. Understanding the various components communicating with one-another cybersecurity, like in other industries, has come to the forefront highlighting the need to protect these networks and systems from cyberattacks. With the planned growth and reach of UAM systems, it’s clear that the associated data exchange and service interactions will be at risk due to numerous types of cybersecurity attacks. Consequently, as these threats evolve, the UAM cybersecurity capabilities must adapt to these changes as well. While learning is always the goal, the overall intent of this workshop is to make recommendations on the following: (1) how future UAM environments can be protected against cyber-attacks, and (2) what mechanisms should be put in place to detect attacks against UAM environments.
UAM↗
Multi-Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace
This document is a poster for imaginAviation 2023 that describes multi-aircraft operations in the National Airspace.
m:N↗
UAM Airspace Research Roadmap - Rev. 2.0
The UAM Airspace research roadmap is being developed as a new System Engineering methodology leveraging Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) capabilities to help organize, integrate, and communicate NASA's UAM airspace research, with the goal of evolving UAM airspace to UML-4. It provides a basis for prioritizing and coordinating research efforts, and for integrating results that build towards NASA’s research goals. Version 2.0 is a baseline version of the roadmap, shared publicly to serve as a focal point for discussion and feedback. This version supersedes earlier publications, and will be superseded itself by later versions.
UAM↗
Advances in Aero-Propulsive Modeling for Fixed-Wing and eVTOL Aircraft Using Experimental Data
Small unmanned aircraft and electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft have recently emerged as vehicles able to perform new missions and stimulate future air transportation methods. This dissertation presents several system identification research advancements for these modern aircraft configurations enabling accurate mathematical model development for flight dynamics simulations based on wind-tunnel and flight-test data. The first part of the dissertation focuses on advances in flight-test system identification methods using small, fixed-wing, remotely-piloted, electric, propeller-driven aircraft. A generalized approach for flight dynamics model development for small fixed-wing aircraft from flight data is described and is followed by presentation of novel flight-test system identification applications, including: aero-propulsive model development for propeller aircraft and nonlinear dynamic model identification without mass properties. The second part of the dissertation builds on established fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft system identification methods to develop modeling strategies for transitioning, distributed propulsion, eVTOL aircraft. Novel wind-tunnel experiment designs and aero-propulsive modeling approaches are developed using a subscale, tandem tilt-wing, eVTOL aircraft, leveraging design of experiments and response surface methodology techniques. Additionally, a method applying orthogonal phase-optimized multisine input excitations to aircraft control effectors in wind-tunnel testing is developed to improve test efficiency and identified model utility. Finally, the culmination of this dissertation is synthesis of the techniques described throughout the document to form a flight-test system identification approach for eVTOL aircraft that is demonstrated using a high-fidelity flight dynamics simulation. The research findings highlighted throughout the dissertation constitute substantial progress in efficient empirical aircraft modeling strategies that are applicable to many current and future aeronautical vehicles enabling accurate flight simulation development, which can subsequently be used to foster advancement in many other pertinent technology areas.
system identification↗
Design of a Multi-Tiltrotor Concept Vehicle for Urban Air Mobility: “Version 0” Design, Design Review: Nov 3, 2021
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Advanced Air Mobility↗
Evaluation of Novel eVTOL Aircraft Automation Concepts
As new electric propulsion technologies have matured, many new electric propulsion Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft concepts have been proposed. These new aircraft concepts enable the creation of new aviation markets including Urban Air Mobility (UAM) but also pose new challenges in safety assurance. One early challenge is the evaluation of the diverse aircraft configurations and accompanying advanced control systems and automation designed to aid controllability. This paper describes a research activity to propose candidate means of evaluation for the aircraft concepts and automation in the context of UAM operations. The research activity proposes the adaptation of an evaluation design standard used by the military for advanced rotorcraft along with proposed descriptions and definitions to support evaluation of diverse automated concepts in the civilian eVTOL community.
AAM↗
A Concept of Operations for Power Beaming of Electric Air Vehicles
A concept of operations is presented for power beaming of microwaves to extend battery charge of an electric air vehicle. Critical aspects of airspace operations and power beam charging are addressed. Three classes of electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing vehicle models are considered for recharging. The effects of transmitter frequency, antenna size, and beam width are analyzed. Based on past experiments in the industry, a 2.5 kW power beam is selected. A no-drag rectifying antenna under the belly of the vehicle is selected along with the conversion efficiency, power density, and its size. The combined efficiency of the transmit/receive system as well as the beam containment values are addressed. These parameters are chosen to assess viability and feasibility of the energy augmentation method to establish safety for humans on-board from exposure to the transmitted energy. NASA will test the concept of operations in a laboratory experiment with parameters selected and presented in this paper.
eVTOL vehicles↗
Advanced Air Mobility
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Advanced Air Mobility↗
Data and Reasoning Fabric (DRF)
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Data Reasoning↗
A Concept of Operations for Power Beaming of Electric Air Vehicles
A concept of operations is presented for power beaming of microwaves to extend battery charge of an electric air vehicle. Critical aspects of airspace operations and power beam charging are addressed. Three classes of electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing vehicle models are considered for recharging. The effects of transmitter frequency, antenna size, and beam width are analyzed. Based on past experiments in the industry, a 2.5 kW power beam is selected. A no-drag rectifying antenna under the belly of the vehicle is selected along with the conversion efficiency, power density, and its size. The combined efficiency of the transmit/receive system as well as the beam containment values are addressed. These parameters are chosen to assess viability and feasibility of the energy augmentation method to establish safety for humans on-board from exposure to the transmitted energy. NASA will test the concept of operations in a laboratory experiment with parameters selected and presented here.
eVTOL vehicles↗
A Laboratory Psychoacoustic Test of the Tradeoff Between Frequent UAM Events and Their Level
Earlier this year, a psychoacoustic test was conducted in the EER which investigated how members of the public reacted to scenarios containing multiple UAM flyover events. The subjects read books of their choosing for 4 minutes at a time, during which a scenario played. They were asked to register their annoyance reaction to the scenario on an 11 point numerical scale after all of the flyovers had played. The scenarios were formulated to have several different tradeoffs between the number of flyovers played within the 4 minutes, and the level of the flyovers. The results indicate that for paces of operations typical of a busy airport (from .5 to 2 flyovers per minute), subjects seemed to be more sensitive to an increase in the number of operations than would be implied by the equal-energy hypothesis. For numbers of operations greater than this - more than what could be achieved at an airport, but perhaps what is possible in UAM scenarios - the subjects were less sensitive to increases in the number of operations and seemed to revert to the equal-energy tradeoff between level and number.
Psychoacoustics↗
Aero-Propulsive Modeling for eVTOL Aircraft Using Experimental Data
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
system identification↗
Vertiport Management from Simulation to Flight: Continued Human Factors Assessment of Vertiport Operations
The Urban Air Mobility concept envisions a new future for transportation in urban environments, primarily focused around vertiport operations. A vertiport refers to an identifiable ground or elevated area used for the vertical takeoff and landing of an aircraft. One critical role within vertiport operations that has been proposed but is under-researched is the vertiport manager. The vertiport manager is expected to manage the ground-to-air operations at the vertiport, but their precise responsibilities, tasks, and challenges are currently undefined. The High Density Vertiplex Subproject at NASA is responsible for developing and testing technologies, concepts, and architectures that will support the infrastructure needed for terminal environments around vertiports. Our previous work investigated ground control station operators performing simulated and live flight operations within a remote operations environment. In the current study, we extended from our previous work to explore the role of a vertiport manager. Specifically, we investigated five participants serving as a vertiport manager across both simulated and live flight operations. We performed multiple knowledge elicitation techniques, a thematic content analysis of qualitative data, and naturalistic observations to create a list of insights, design and training recommendations, and a simplified cognitive task diagram of the vertiport manager’s primary task. Findings from this study are discussed within the context of the current debate on the degree to which this role should be automated. A third alternative is suggested to allow a human vertiport manager to be successful by teaming with increasingly autonomous systems, designing the role to improve safety and efficiency of Urban Air Mobility operations.
AAM↗