Steering Aircraft Clear of Choppy Air
A team of researchers at Langley Research Center, under the Turbulence Prediction and Warning Systems (TPAWS) project, developed two special technologies that can automatically alert pilots of potentially hazardous turbulence conditions, in real time.
Transcript
00:00:02 fasten your seat belts it's going to be a bumpy ride for the most part no one likes bumpy rides especially on airplanes those rides are usually the result of turbulence from rough weather but a small business in Virginia called Aerotech research incorporated has been developing Technologies to help with bumpy plane rides they're working with engineers at Nasa Langley Research
00:00:27 Center on a project to improve a pilot's awareness Ness of turbulence in order to avoid it the project turbulence prediction and warning system or tuse is part of NASA's Aviation safety program turbulence was identified as one of the safety areas not because people are being killed but because it's the biggest source of injuries in the airline industry today's current
00:00:51 Airborne radar is limited in providing information about turbulence hotspots NASA and Aerotech developed enhanced turbulence mode radar algorithm or eerb that can give a better picture of turbulence eerb works by measuring air motions along the flight path and scaling the measurements to the aircraft's response to turbulence the predicted turbulence hazards show up as
00:01:15 purple blobs on the radar display it takes a radar measurement and combines it with some aircraft information what thecraft type is weight speed Etc and then calculates the predicted loads from that radar measurement the purple blobs provide Pilots with an advanced warning of turbulence so they can take steps to go around the area teaw and Aerotech also developed a technology to
00:01:43 complement eerb called Taps which stands for turbulence Auto pyre system py reps are actual pilot reports of the weather conditions encountered in Flight if Taps is installed on an aircraft that runs into turbulence exceeding established limits it will generate a report is processing that in such a ways to make sense of the severity of the turbulence that the aircraft is experiencing once
00:02:08 that severity gets above a particular threshold the software says we got to make a report and so it gathers up uh a number of different parameters and immediately sends a report down to the ground small carrots on the displays represent reported incidents of turbulence these reports provide realtime turbulence hazards to Pilots dispatchers and controllers and they can
00:02:33 be scaled to reflect the impact to an individual aircraft what we're trying to do is just an evolutionary step in Taps to take what's already on the airplane in terms of the sensors and the computers and do a little bit better job of processing that information and make reports automatically initially Aerotech put eerb and some components of Taps on
00:02:58 langly 757 aircraft and flew directly into turbulence to get measurements after refining the algorithms Aerotech and Langley teamed with Delta Airlines to begin using the software on a commercial aircraft other partners included Rockwell Collins for its radar reports and airing for its ground displays to date Taps has been installed on over 120 commercial Delta planes and
00:03:23 continues to provide flight reports more Airlines at home and abroad are now getting involved in the taps project which will enable Pilots to get reports worldwide under a small business Innovation research award from Langley The Firm continues to work with the center's Engineers pilots and dispatchers they're putting eerb and tabs on the same display and hopefully
00:03:47 in the not too distant future there'll be no more bumpy rides