Design and validation of the evolved version of the tactical separation system
Abstract
Purpose
The small air transport (SAT) domain is gaining increasing interest over the past decade, based on its perspective relevance in enabling efficient travel over a regional range, by exploiting small airports and fixed wing aircraft with up to 19 seats (EASA CS-23 category). To support its wider adoption, it is needed to enable single pilot operations.
Design/methodology/approach
An integrated mission management system (IMMS) has been designed and implemented, able to automatically optimize the aircraft path by considering trajectory optimization needs. It takes into account both traffic scenario and weather actual and forecasted condition and is also able to select best destination airport, should pilot incapacitation occur during flight. As part of the IMMS, dedicated evolved tactical separation system (Evo-TSS) has been designed to provide elaboration of both surrounding and far located traffic and subsequent traffic clustering, to support the trajectory planning/re-planning by the IMMS.
Findings
The Clean Sky 2-funded project COAST (Cost Optimized Avionics SysTem) successfully designed and validated through flight demonstrations relevant technologies enabling affordable cockpit and avionics and supporting single pilot operations for SAT vehicles. These technologies include the TSS in its baseline and evolved versions, included in the IMMS.
Originality/value
This paper describes the TSS baseline version and the basic aspects of the Evo-TSS design. It is aimed to outline the implementation of the Evo-TSS dedicated software in Matlab/Simulink environment, the planned laboratory validation campaign and the results of the validation exercises in fast-time Matlab/Simulink environment, which were successfully concluded in 2023.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was carried out in the framework of the COAST (Cost Optimized Avionics SysTem) project. COAST project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking (Clean Aviation), under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No. 945535).
Citation
Di Vito, V., Torrano, G., Cerasuolo, G. and Ferrucci, M. (2024), "Design and validation of the evolved version of the tactical separation system", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/AEAT-03-2024-0080
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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