Research Projects

LAX Tow Tugs Feasibility Study

PI Massoud Bazargan

Currently, United Airlines does not have any tow tugs at LAX and uses only tractors with pull bars.

These are not suited for the lengthy tows. Due to high cost of these tow tugs a study is needed to identify economic viability of purchasing these tow tugs. In particular, the airline would like to identify metrics such NPV, payback, and IRR determined for a period of 5 years after buying these tow tugs.

Categories: Faculty-Staff

Manpower Planning for Maintenance Crew at SFO

PI Massoud Bazargan

The objective of this project is to optimize the use of maintenance manpower at San Francisco International Airport for efficient use of available resources and reduce flight delays.

The project uses simulation for one full day of an airline's operations. The simulation model developed can identify the number of delays as well as the total time of delays that may occur throughout the system due to shortage of maintenance workforce

Categories: Faculty-Staff

NextGen Task G 4D FMS TBO Demonstration Benefits Analyses

PI Massoud Bazargan

The goal of the project was to leverage existing technology and Flight Management System (FMS) capabilities as a starting point to define standards and requirements for trajectory exchange, time of arrival control, and other building blocks.

The analyses focuses on benefits of these standards and requirements.

Categories: Faculty-Staff

Statistical Analysis for General Aviation Accidents

PI Massoud Bazargan

The identification of causal factors for problems within a complex system present a variety of challenges to the investigator.

This project will proceed by considering existing data on GA accidents, applying data mining methods to highlight patterns, applying mathematical and statistical methods to model relationships, and finally to employ simulation to test, refine and verify results.

Categories: Faculty-Staff

Tow Tug Simulation Feasibility Study

PI Massoud Bazargan

In this study we conduct a feasibility study using simulation for AirTran Airways at their hub in Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL). This study pertains to using super-tug to transport aircraft to and from the airline's maintenance facility.

The purchasing price for these super-tugs is around a quarter of a million dollars. This study attempts to investigate the possibility of reducing costs through saving jet fuel. This study adopts simulation to analyze the annual savings by studying the numbers needed, as well as the utilization and operation cost for these super-tugs. The results are very interesting, enabling the airline to clearly evaluate the cost and benefits of purchasing new super-tugs.

Categories: Faculty-Staff

The Rise and Fall of the Veterans' Airlines

PI Alan Bender

This is an investigation into a practically unknown chapter in U.S. airline history: the advent of a brand new breed of airlines in the aftermath of World War II, mom-and-pop discounters immensely popular with the general public but very threatening to the established airlines and to the federal regulatory system.

Postwar America was a land full of opportunity. Economically and socially, in both industry and education, it was the dawn of a new era. But such was not the case in the U.S. airline industry. New technology meant faster, bigger, safer, more comfortable aircraft, yet traveling by air remained unaffordable to the vast majority of Americans. This is the story of opportunity lost due to rampant government protectionism and powerful vested interests. Utilizing historical materials from the National Air and Space Museum, National Archives, Library of Congress, four presidential libraries, and various oral history collections, a book is being prepared and written that documents the history of these long forgotten - yet historically very significant - airline companies that truly pioneered affordable airline transportation in America.

Categories: Faculty-Staff

Discontinuity-driven mesh adaptation method for hyperbolic conservation laws

PI Mihhail Berezovski

The proposed project is aimed at developing a highly accurate, efficient, and robust one-dimensional adaptive-mesh computational method for simulation of the propagation of discontinuities in solids. The principal part of this research is focused on the development of a new mesh adaptation technique and an accurate discontinuity tracking algorithm that will enhance the accuracy and efficiency of computations. The main idea is to combine the flexibility afforded by a dynamically moving mesh with the increased accuracy and efficiency of a discontinuity tracking algorithm, while preserving the stability of the scheme.

Key features of the proposed method are accuracy and stability, which will be ensured by the ability of the adaptive technique to preserve the modified mesh as close to the original fixed one as possible. To achieve this goal, a special monitor function is introduced along with an accurate grid reallocation technique. The resulting method, while based on the thermodynamically consistent numerical algorithm for wave and front propagation formulated in terms of excess quantities, incorporates special numerical techniques for an accurate and efficient interface tracking, and a dynamic grid reconstruction function. The numerical results using this method will be compared with results of phase-transition front propagation in solids and densification front propagation in metal foam obtained by applying the fixed-mesh method be used to justify the effectiveness and correctness of the proposed framework. This project will contribute significantly towards the development of corresponding methods in higher dimensions including dynamic crack propagation problems. Development of modern high-resolution finite-volume methods for propagation of discontinuities in solids, as well as of supplementary techniques, is essential for a broad class of problems arising in today's science. The broader impact of this project also includes educational purposes. The method used in this project will be incorporated into future projects for computational mathematics major students who will gain an experience in the state-of-the-art computational science.

Categories: Faculty-Staff

Novel Space Science Test via Adaptive Control and Integral Concurrent Learning Leveraging On-Orbit CubeSat Structural Identification

PI Riccardo Bevilacqua

The objective of this work is to create the basic science underpinning the structural testing and evaluation framework and control for deployable large spacecraft.

The objective of this work is to create the basic science underpinning the structural testing and evaluation framework and control for deployable large spacecraft. Large space structures and those with high dimensional ratio between deployed and stowed configurations are extremely difficult to test on the ground. The AFRL’s Space Vehicle Directorate recently opened the new Deployable Structures Laboratory, or DeSeL, as evidence of a renewed interest towards these systems. DeSeL represents the state-of-the-art technology for on-the-ground experimentation of deployable systems. In particular, an active Gravity Off-Load Follower (GOLF) cart system is being currently developed, intended to have three degrees of freedom (attitude motion) which could foreseeably provide the capability for large low-frequency motions. The real capabilities of the GOLF system are yet to be determined, and this research effort will develop in parallel, assist, support and inform the development of this new facility at AFRL.

New testing and evaluation science to identify these systems’ behavior and control them, that are robust to large uncertainties in the structural dynamics are then needed, and the first time they deploy on orbit is the ultimate test.

We propose to obtain the objective by combining novel control and learning theory with ad-hoc experimental activities. The culmination of this effort will be a flight demonstration, where a CubeSat previously designed by the Advanced Autonomous Multiple Spacecraft (ADAMUS) laboratory will be modified in its design and perform autonomous on-orbit structural identification, control, and testing.

The flight demonstration will be based on measuring the natural frequencies, damping ratios and vibration mode shapes via excitation of the spacecraft, using reaction wheels on the main hub and potentially distributed small thrusters on the flexible bodies, emulating the configuration of the AFRL’s Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research Project (SSPIDR).

Categories: Faculty-Staff

GNC Efforts in Support of the University of Floridas Research for the NASA Instrument Incubator

PI Riccardo Bevilacqua

The following tasks will be performed by one Ph.D. student and Dr. Bevilacqua (PI at ERAU), in support of the University of Florida’s proposal for the NASA’s Instrument Incubator Program (IIP):

Year 1:

Drag-compensation and test mass control design. Adaptive control combined with integral concurrent learning will be investigated to estimate, in real-time, the effects of drag on the spacecraft, to enable precise control of the test mass inside it. The PI has successfully used this technique for drag-based spacecraft formation flight, where online estimation of the ballistic coefficient of an unknown vehicle is critical.
Support for drag-compensation thruster mapping. Lyapunov-based thruster selection principles, previously developed by the PI, will be used to simplify the thruster mapping problem, and prevent the use of any numerical iterations, to ease online implementation. An additional step will involve exploring the possibility to use adaptive + ICL control to also estimate the thrust errors and their misalignment.

Year 2:

Spacecraft acceleration estimation based on S-GRS outputs. The test mass position and orientation are measured inside the sensor and the applied forces and torques on the test mass are known. How to use this information to optimally estimate the spacecraft acceleration and angular acceleration due to atmospheric drag remains a challenge. An approach based on a bank of Kalman (or Extended Kalman) Filters will be explored, possibly in iterative form, as previously done for spacecraft relative motion estimation by Dr. Gurfil at Technion and by the PI and one of his former students.

Year 3:

Support for hardware-in-the-loop testing of the control system at UF. The PI and the PhD student will support experimentation at UF, to implement the above algorithms in hardware systems. The PI has over a decade of experience in on-the-ground testing of spacecraft GNC systems.

Year 1-3:

Support for numerical simulation of the closed-loop system. High-fidelity orbital and attitude propagators will be used to test the algorithms developed. STK and NASA’s Spice will also be candidates for comparison.

Categories: Faculty-Staff

CubeSats Hosting Flexible Appendages for On-Orbit Testing of Advanced Control Algorithms

PI Riccardo Bevilacqua

The objective of this work is to start the assembly of a CubeSat hosting specialized flexible appendages, taking inspiration from a previously designed spacecraft developed by the Advanced Autonomous Multiple Spacecraft (ADAMUS).

The objective of this work is to start the assembly of a CubeSat hosting specialized flexible appendages, taking inspiration from a previously designed spacecraft developed by the Advanced Autonomous Multiple Spacecraft (ADAMUS). This CubeSat will eventually enable testing of ADAMUS’ developed spacecraft control algorithms on-orbit.

Relevance to NASA: The innovation proposed herein lies in the ability to autonomously characterize and control complex space structures. This project will directly support NASA’s TA 4: Robotics and Autonomous Systems

Categories: Faculty-Staff