Volume 5, Number 5     September/October 1997

Small Business/SBIR

Aircraft May Operate Like Cars

IRCRAFT COULD BE AS EASY TO OPERATE AS an automobile through the participation of a Virginia developer in NASA's Small Business Innovation Research program. Aurora Flight Sciences of Manassas, Virginia, took the complex system of multiple control levers and gauges and replaced them with a single-lever power control technology and single display in an effort to achieve the advantages of single-lever power control systems, such as increased engine performance and fuel efficiency and substantially reduced pilot workload.

Aurora completed the first successfully flown flight using a single-lever control in a modified Cessna 02-A. The company's device took the three standard engine control levers—throttle, fuel-air mixture and propeller pitch angle&151;and had them performed by a computer referred to as a single-channel full-authority digital engine control, making an air-cooled aircraft engine work much like the accelerator pedal in an automobile.

In current general aviation aircraft, several levers are used for engine power control (as seen on center console unit).

Cessna Aircraft will soon be flight-testing its modified Cessna 182 RG with a mechanical single-lever power control connecting the throttle with the propeller. A dual-channel engine control is used to control the electronic ignition and fuel injection.

The use of a single lever for power control in retrofitted and future aircraft reduces the number of flight-related displays in the instrument panel, thus increasing pilot awareness.

This technology is being developed by the ten industry members of the Propulsion Sensors and Controls Work Package of the Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiment (AGATE) to revitalize general aviation in this country through an alliance between government and the U.S. light plane industry. NASA's Lewis Research Center is managing the effort to develop guidelines, standards and certification methods for engine controls and diagnostics.

For more information, contact Lori Rachul at Lewis Research Center.
Call 216/433-8806 E-mail: eatrue@popserve.lerc.nasa.gov

Please mention you read about it in Innovation.