Model-Based Tool for the Automatic Validation of Rotorcraft Regime Recognition Algorithms

Accurate and reliable Regime Recognition (RR) algorithms are a key enabling technology for a Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) program, which tailors the service profile to individual vehicles based on actual aircraft usage. In general, production RR algorithms with the required accuracy to provide such usage information do not exists yet, in part because of the expense and human involvement currently required to develop and independently verify and validate the candidate approaches. A dominant cost factor is the need to perform numerous flight tests and the associated time-consuming V&V process of manually comparing RR algorithm results with flight test data. The proposed Independent Verification & Validation (IV&V) software tool addresses both of these cost drivers by (i) automating the analysis and its attendant quantitative statistics for an objective measure of performance, both absolute and relative to alternative RR codes under consideration and (ii) automating the process of obtaining an information rich set of data that feeds the IV&V logic through novel combinations flight-test data , and of high-fidelity, model-based rotorcraft simulation maneuvers instantiated by the tool.