Enhanced fault detection and diagnosis solutions for air data systems

The objectives

Several recent safety events have highlighted that common mode sources could affect consistently two or more air data parameters and remain undetected by state-of-the-art individual and consistency cross-checks, resulting in the use of erroneous air data parameters (e.g. airspeed, angle of attack) in the flight control laws.

The main objective of the project is to propose and develop novel methods to detect and/or be robust to multiple consistent and possibly simultaneous air data probe failures.  This will improve the EASA certification standards, and support the evaluation of new designs proposed by aircraft manufacturers.

The main tasks and deliverables

The project tasks include the definition of a benchmark, and an evaluation of the proposed solutions both in terms of effectiveness and robustness to situations (e.g. manoeuvres, environment).

It is expected that flight parameter estimation (FPE), fault detection and diagnosis (FDD), and/or fault-tolerant control (FTC) methods or combined/integrated methods will be used. These methods may be model based (e.g. estimators / virtual sensors), data based (i.e. model-free methods, signal treatment), or a combination of both types. Attention will be paid to the effectiveness of the solutions and their robustness, e.g. no degradation of the current availability of the flight control law level.

Several technical workshops for Stakeholders (e.g. manufacturing industries, research centers) will be organised to present the project objectives and results as well as invite them to share their comments.