Civil Airplane Safety Awareness Technology Using Virtual Flight Method

Civil airplanes encounter unpredictable safety risks due to uncertain environmental disturbances, mechanical failures, and pilot mis-operations. This paper develops a virtual flight method (VFM) consisting of a series of techniques including flight motion simulation, flight command simulation, flight control simulation, and flight environment simulation. Moreover, a safety perception technique is established using fuzzy safety constraints, which transfers the decoupled analysis of micro-level aircraft state parameters to the coupled analysis of macro-level global system parameters. This integrated approach enables virtual flight operations and safety situation awareness for civil aircraft within the ‘Human–Machine–Environment’ triad under the influences of complex factors. The takeoff and climb scenario of the Cessna Citation 550 aircraft is selected as a case study to validate the feasibility of the proposed safety awareness technology. Results illustrate the capability to effectively capture the aircraft’s flight characteristics and safety status of the civil aircraft under various operational conditions. The safe operational envelope within specific scenarios is also determined.