CONCEPT OF A NEW SYSTEM SYNTHESIZING METEOROLOGICAL AND OROGRAPHIC INFLUENCES ON THE AIRPLANE SAFE ENERGY ENVELOPE

An overproportioned number of accidents involving general aviation occur in complex terrain. According to the statistics included in the accident investigation reports published by the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board (STSB), in some cases, pilots overestimated the energy reserves of their aircraft leading to a loss of control. In order to increase flight safety for private pilots in mountainous regions, on behalf of the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation, the Centre for Aviation (ZAV) at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) develops an energy management system for general aviation, which displays the remaining airplane's energy reserves taking into account meteorological information. As a result, the pilots can perform the necessary flight manoeuvres and adapt them to the situation so that the power envelope of the aircraft is not exceeded. The research project comprises two phases: i) concept and feasibility study and ii) prototype development. The phase one of the project has been recently completed. In this phase, the first implementation of the Energy Management system was carried out. To evaluate the system, a series of flight simulation tests were conducted in the ZAV's Research and Didactics Simulator (ReDSim). A group of experienced pilots participated in the pilot-in-the-loop simulations. This paper introduces the applied methodology on building the new flight simulation environment in the framework of the interdisciplinary research project. Further, the paper draws a summary of the concept study and gives an outlook of the prototype development in the next phase.