A comprehensive safety analysis method research for vehicle management system

With the advent of electronic technology and computer technology, integrated management and control is the development tendency of the airborne electronic system in advanced aircraft. Modern aircrafts are designed to use a vehicle management system (VMS) that integrates many flight critical functions into one system. Vehicle management system (VMS) benefit a lot from integration; however, the safety issues brought from integration have been ignored. The new hazards cannot be well resolved through traditional safety analysis based on ARP 4761. The paper summarizes the relevant safety problems of VMS system include the issues introduced by integration design. On the basis of ARP 4761, the paper proposes a comprehensive safety analysis method to analyze the potential threats in VMS system from four aspects. The method makes full use of the various analytical techniques to identify a more wide range of hazards in VMS system. Then detailed analysis processes are given to guide hazard analysis. Finally the method has been applied in the VMS system in a project, which shows the method is feasible. The methods in this paper can also be used to analyze other integrated systems' safety, which can guide VMS's designs.