Dissertation advice required!

[MikeyWings]

Hi all,

I'm about to start the final year of my BEng Aircraft Engineering with Pilot Studies degree, and need to come up with a topic for my dissertation (or 'final year project' as they call it at Salford Uni).

Ideally I'd like it to deal with a current topical issue that hasn't already been researched to death, but not being an aviation industry insider as yet, its hard to find out about specific issues currently arising.

Areas which particularly interest me include CRM, human factors, cockpit design, airfield design, crash investigation, and generally anything which affects the course of a flight, so anything that would touch upon one or more of these subjects or similar would be something i could really get my teeth into. I have one or two ideas but could really do with a specific issue to deal with.

So if there's something you insiders feel needs addressing, preferably along the lines of the above topics, or if you just have general ideas for a good project, i'd be very grateful for your suggestions!

Something which may help - I'm doing my PPL through the university and so have access to flying school aircraft (Piper Tomahawks). So anything which could take advantage of that in any way may add an interesting aspect to it - just a thought anyway.

Thanks in advance for your ideas!

MW :ok:

[hugel]

Synthetic Vision
Precision Navigation
ADS & Integrated Comms
Sensor Fusion
HUD Installation on civil aircraft
Required ground-based infrastructure for new avionics
Impact of integrated displays on pilot behaviour
Wireless Networking on an aircraft

Hope this gives you a few ideas...

hugel

[xfeed]

Mikey,

How about the lack of CRM in the Tenerife disaster? There are also human factors involved due to lack of line time for the KLM captain, duty hours being an issue as well as all the other little glitches that took place to set up the world's worst aviation disaster. It seems to have all the elements you're after, although perhaps it has been done quite frequently?

Cheers,

xfeed

[MMEMatty]

How about the evolution of cockpit layouts/systems with respect to the improvement of CRM and fault diagnosis / restoration?

I For one would find that interesting...

[Loose rivets]

You might discuss the loss of authority suffered by the modern airline pilot. It would fall into at least two categories.

1/ Any Tom Dick or Harry it seems, can tell the modern pilot what to do. How much fuel to carry, what sandwiches they can take on board. You get the drift.

2/ The more serious and relevant -- to your future PhD hopefully, will be the issue of computers taking over the decision making.

I used to find that electro-mechanical interactions were the most difficult part of the technical course when I changed aircraft. If this gizmo goes off line, then this micro-switch would cause valve A to be inhibited, and the result of that would be the loss of widget N. I would spend hours, re-writing the manual and drawing little diagrams, so that I could stay ahead of the game if anything untoward happened. I got known for it, and some checklists were changed as a result of my...well, protests really.

To show a pilot a screen covered in schematic diagrams...and then show it again after relay F had closed, was an exercise in futility. I could reduce a thousand line diagram to a few logic boxes and then show the action with sweeping colored arrows. After years learning electronics, I couldn't follow the pilot's hand-outs.

I knew that my colleagues were learning by wrote. I've deleted what I thought of that! They had to know what was the real affect on the systems when something happened, and they had to know quickly, and with a clarity born of good teaching. I could impart more true understanding in an hour in the hanger, than a day in the classroom.

These days we don't need nearly as many micro, (or even torque-switches,:rolleyes: ) -- because software is king. Almost all modern electronics is based on dedicated programmable chips. They are made for the job, and the soft is written to cover all eventualities. Yeah, right!

The big question these days, is just how much detail can the modern pilot cope with and how much must he or she trust a vast chain-reaction of changes, in the event of a failure?

It's a huge subject, and one that is evolving without due concern for the pilot's authority.

[hugel]

An interesting aspect of that is the level of abstraction that the equipment provides: reporting the consequences of a failure in the cockpit, rather than the failure itself may provide information to allow the pilot to mitigate, but it may not identify the cause of the problem. There is a lot of emphasis on the workload of the pilot being reduced, fusion of sensor and integration of displays, but there is the possibility that the pilot is becoming less aware of what is really going on in the aircraft with increased reliance on automated procedures and responses.

hugel

[Pitch&Fan]

I think Loose Rivets has an interesting suggestion... Line one of his suggestion.

The operative word here (in my opinion) being "Authority".

Best of luck with this very demanding endeavour Mate!

[barit1]

I once did a paper comparing two related accidents (prop failed to fine pitch), with failure fault trees etc. Although both accidents were fatal, the big difference was the airspeed at time of failure.

1967 CV 580:
DCA67A0005 (http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=21426&key=0)

1991 Brasilia:
DCA91MA033 (http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20001212X16773&key=1)

[MikeyWings]

Wow, thank you all so much for your responses - its one thing me, the humble student, trying to come up with ideas for a good, relevant project, but hearing the views of real pilots, engineers and the like is gold dust!

This issue of a loss of authority is very interesting. One thing that has been highlighted during my studies is how the advancement of flight-deck automation has led to concerns over the human-machine interface and the challenge of keeping the pilot "in the loop". The idea of a loss of authority seems to take this a step further, and it's clearly something which must be addressed as the advancements continue.

It ticks all the right boxes as far as I'm concerned, and there are lots of directions I could take it in. I do already have a few general ideas which fit in nicely with this subject, so it would provide a good focus to build around. Thanks again everyone for your time, every post is of help!

MW.

[Carnage Matey!]

How about airfield design with an emphasis on runway incursions? Loads of research available on that you can plagiarise, errrrr, I mean reference.

[OverRun]

MikeyWings

Standing back from the aviation, and talking about the academic side of it:

TOPIC
In picking your topic, it’s important to choose one that gives enough for you to be able to work on it, rather than one that sounds nice but won’t give you anything to work on. By doing work on it, I mean:

- you doing a laboratory or field experiment to collect data, or
- taking someone else’s data set, and analysing that, or
- doing advanced engineering computation.

Generally your lecturer/university will have some experiments already going on, and there will be sections of research to be done by you in these experiments. In other cases, you may be working for an employer that has their own data or laboratory that can be used. Otherwise you’ll have to find some data to analyse.


Examples of topics I have given students at the 4th year civil engineering level, in each of the above categories, include:

Field experiment – we were measuring friction on an airport and some freeways. We had a new type of friction measuring machine. The student worked with the operator to test them with the new machine and to test them with our old type of machine, and to development the calibration equations for the new machine against the old machine.

Someone else’s data - There are major databases of long term pavement performance (LTPP) which can be accessed freely on the web and used to test hypotheses. This research study examined if the initial roughness of a pavement section has any effects on its long-term performance. The statistical tests performed indicate that asphalt and concrete pavements with low initial smoothness stay smooth over time.

Advanced engineering computation – we had a new bitumen product combining bitumen and solvent to make something that could be sprayed at low temperatures, covered with stones, and then which the solvent rapidly evaporated and it hardened in a couple of days. The student analysed the diffusion of the solvent through the bitumen using advanced diffusion mathematical modelling.


TITLE
The trick is to make your title/topic narrow rather than wide. You haven’t got much time available (compared to masters and PhDs), so it helps being narrow. Hugel [and others] has made some good suggestions already, such as: “HUD Installation on civil aircraft”. That could be written up in several areas such as installation, design, effect on safety, cost/benefit analysis, ergonomics, etc. You could even narrow that down further into “A comparison of single and dual HUD installations on civil aircraft” if you had the data or experiment available to enable you to research in that narrow area.

TIME ALLOCATION
The optimum allocation is to allow a quarter on reading up (literature search and writing it up and recording the references properly), a quarter on getting your data, a quarter on data analysis, and a quarter on writing it up. No-one ever does that, but it is nice to dream of it.

Don’t get caught in spending half your time on reading, and the second half on getting your data, and leaving nothing for analysis and writing up. Many students do that, and have a tough time at the end frantically writing 18 hours a day to get what can only be a poor mark.


LITERATURE REVIEW
This is the bit where you read up about what is known in the field, and get the extracts and quotes to use in your report (without plagarising them), and where you write up your references.

It is not just using Google. Instead, use ‘Google Scholar’ as the minimum. I just tried it now and got 53,000 good-quality hits searching on 3 words ‘head display aircraft’. Then of course you have to start to sort through them, and maybe do more searches to narrow things down a little. Once you have the titles of papers you want to read, you need to use your university’s library – they have the online subscriptions to access the better journal articles.

For example, one journal article I just found sounds pretty good for you to read:
The Efficacy of Head-Down and Head-Up Synthetic Vision Display Concepts for Retro- and Forward-Fit of Commercial Aircraft by Lawrence J. Prinzel III; J. Raymond Comstock Jr; Louis J. Glaab; Lynda J. Kramer; Jarvis J. Arthur; John S. Barry. In International Journal of Aviation Psychology, Volume 14, Issue 1 February 2004 , pages 53 – 77

The library should allow you to access that journal free and online, and even if not, they will get you the article for free in a few days anyway. I reckon at the 4th year level, you’ll need 20+ references, of which 5+ will be journal articles.

I strongly suggest you write the references up properly on the day that you access it or you will lose them. The simplest is to use a Word file and just keep adding to it and sorting it at the end. Here is the sort of stuff that should be appearing in it within a couple of days of starting your literature search (these are civil engineering examples from a recent student of mine):

Moranville-Regourd, M. (1997), Cements made from blastfurnace slag, Chapter 11 of Lea’s Chemistry of Cement and Concrete, 4th edition, Arnold, London UK. pp. 634

Sherwood, P.T., (1995) Alternative Materials in Road Construction, Thomas Telford, London, UK.

Shi, C., Wu, X., and Tang, M. (1993), Research on alkali-activated cementitious systems in China: a review, Advances in Cement Research, Vol. 5, No. 17, pp1-7


BTW the ‘Prof’ in my avatar stands for Professor.

[kijangnim]

Greetings,
What about "Engineers and Pilots two different worlds in the space"

[OverRun]

Here is a starting point reference:
Control Engineering Practice
Volume 7, Issue 2, February 1999, Pages 173-182
Lena Mårtensson
Are operators and pilots in control of complex systems?

Abstract
The main theme of the paper is the opportunities that are available for the operator/pilot to be in control of a complex system. Results of empirical studies indicate that the development of competence in operators is neglected in many cases, creating difficulties for operators who are required to solve problems in disturbances and in emergency situations. Further, the participation of the end-users in the design of a new system is rarely considered, be it an industrial system or an aviation system. Examples from highly automated systems in industry will be given, as well as an analysis of an aircraft accident.

Author Keywords: Human requirements; work organization; flexible manufacturing systems; aircraft operation

Index Terms: Large scale systems; Aviators; Aviation; Aircraft accidents; Flexible manufacturing systems; Automation; Human requirements; Work organization; Aircraft operation

And here is a description of an experiment (note that the subjects were not pilots):

http://jeremyjankowski.com/pdf/automation.pdf

[A37575]

Mikey,

How about the lack of CRM in the Tenerife disaster? There are also human factors involved due to lack of line time for the KLM captain, duty hours being an issue as well as all the other little glitches that took place to set up the world's worst aviation disaster

Forget CRM, TEM, Human factors. They have all been done to death countless times ad nauseum.

Total blind adherence to automation forced upon by manufacturers and hailed as the ONLY way to operate a modern jet transport. This is steadily producing qualified seat warmers called flight deck automatics manager (sometimes quaintly known as Pilot Flying even though he does not "fly" the aeroplane except for maybe five minutes of each trip) or flight deck automatics monitor (sometimes called Pilot Monitoring).

Forgive the obvious cynicism, but the problem of automation complacency needs far more effective attention than it gets. With 90 percent of flight simulator training devoted to button pushing and "monitoring" and pages of Ops Manual Bibles of "support" calls to be annunciated to the exact word, is it any wonder pilots are rarely given the opportunity to keep their hands on the controls and practice the essential motor skills needed to land safely on a dark and stormy crosswinds night. If simulator instructors could tell the truth on what they often see when the automatics are switched off it would make your hair stand on end.

A vital subject for a thesis but regretfully it won't change a thing.

[biddedout]

How about regional airport development? There are very busy and successful airports not far from the center of the universe in the South of the UK which are in desperate need of upgraded facilities. Tight budgets, environmental and space constraints along with short term business plans all conspire against their steady co-ordinated development.

For instance when it is foggy, passengers can navigate their cars into the car park using GPS, and yet very well equipped inbound aircraft are forced rely on 50 year old technology VOR approach aids (or worse) which generally result in dissapointment and unnecessary diversions. Once on the ground, only one aircraft is allowed to move at a time, runways are not protected by stop bars and visibility measurements are still made by a human observer standing on a ladder counting runway lights.

There has to be a better way, but its not just a simple matter of throwing money around. There are a huge number of complex factors which need to be thrown into the pot in order to come up with the best long term solutions.

[hugel]

Regional airports are a worthy topic, but I would suggest at Undergraduate level as part of a Pilot Studies course that something building or developing core knowledge of operating the aircraft and flying would probably be most rewarding. If it was me, I would study precision navigation and Required Navigation Performance, or situational awareness. Both are hot topics , relate to the pilot activity, and have direct benefits that can be translated to benefits to the Airline rather than simply new technology for its own sake...

hugel

[Pitch&Fan]

One of the best threads I've seen on PPRuNE in a long time. Prof's guidance is certainly helpful.

The idea of considering the "Erosion of the Captains Authority" is a very applicable one, and doesn't, in my opinion, relate strictly to the automation argument, but rather one of modern airline leadership structures / corporate culture.

Modern society has moved steadily down the slippery slope of compromise, and it may be argued that parental authority, teacher authority, and various other previously well defined authority gradients have been flattened out to the point where many believe they are bordering on ineffective (practically). The argument, on the other hand, may well end up indicating that such authority erosion (or change)is a good thing in a modern society. That's the question really.

Flight Safety statistics show a greatly improved situation, which may in part at least, be accounted to CRM, and other Command style "adjusters"

The concept of the Captain's authority having been eroded within the airline structure itself is the most interesting to me, and I feel that it is well worth researching.

Imagine eroding the doctor's authority in a hospital! Same, same if you ask me...

Good hunting!

[soaring_steph]

Hey all,

I too am at uni, however my title has already been given! Its 'Air Rage', and is a research project where I am to talk about passeneger profiles, causes, effects and what can be changed to prevent air rage.

I aim to focus on the crew legislation side of things.

I've researched government papers, ANO's, caa, aaib, etc. Other than this forum(!), just wondered if anyone knows where I can access more (specalised) information/other resources, and possibly where I could look for crew specific rules/reg's.

Anything would be appreciated.
Good luck Mikey Wings!!


Soaring_steph

[Otto Throttle]

Great topic and a thread which I for one will pop back to on a regular basis to see where it leads.

All the high tech, sexy stuff about automation complacency and the like is great, but what about something low tech and relevant to all pilots, not just those in the modern airliner.

Checklists and the 'conditioned' responses. Strength or Weakness?

A bit like dear old Pavlov and his dogs, pilots sometimes simply cannot help but give a conditioned response to many items on the checklist. It's a fundamental human weakness and it is equally applicable to all airlines and all multi-pilot aircraft types.

Given how many of the automated systems and all their protections rely on human input in the first place, is there a better way?

[NonFlushingLav]

I guess it depends on whether you want to make a difference, ergo reduce accidents. I would start with hiring trends, 200 hour FOs sitting in large airliners. The effect of unions/management on missed maintanance(SW/Alaska Airlines). Flex/Assumed/Reduced thrust SOPS: Risk vs Reward. Trend monitoring with result of flying around on 35000 engines...risk vs reward. GO no Go decisions could always get a revisit, given some people will just GO no matter what...

[OverRun]

'Health issues of air travel'
RL DEHART - Annual review of public health, 2003
... There has been a significant increase in air rage on board aircraft, which poses a threat to flight safety and a fear of harm to passengers and crew. ...

'Road rage, air rage, and now ‘desk rage.’
J Daw - Monitor on Psychology, 2001

'Air Rage: The Underestimated Safety Risk'
A Dahlberg - 2001 - Ashgate

'Air Rage: An Issue of Aviation Security and Safety'
AIR LINE PILOT, 1999 - AIR LINE PILOTS ASSOCIATION

'Air Rage: Crisis in the Skies'
AR Thomas - 2001 - Prometheus Books

'Causes and consequences of air rage in Canada: cases in newspapers.'
RG Smart, RE Mann - Can J Public Health, 2003 - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

'Air Rage: An Emerging Challenge for the Airline Industry'
P Barron, I Campus. Asia Pacific Journal of Transport, 2002

'Alcohol-Related Air Rage: From Damage Control to Primary Prevention'
L Anglin, P Neves, N Giesbrecht, M Kobus-Matthews - The Journal of Primary Prevention, 2003 – Springer ... 23, No. 3, Spring 2003

'Increasing incidence of air rage is both an aviation security and safety issue'
PT Reiss - International Civil Aviation Organisation Journal, 1998

'Responding to Medical Events during Commercial Airline Flights'
MA Gendreau, C DeJohn - New England Journal of Medicine, 2002
... The incidence of disruptive behavior in an aircraft passenger, or "air rage," is on the rise and places flight crew and passengers at high risk for injury. ...


Re-read my earlier posts carefully. Especially the bit about literature review. The above is just page 1 of gs

[MikeyWings]

Sorry I've only just got round to this but thanks very much to everyone who's offered their thoughts, it really is appreciated.

Soaring steph, sounds like an interesting topic you have there. OverRun has given some great advice on this thread, so I'm sure reading through that will help you. The thing I've found particularly useful for info/references etc is my University's "e-library" where you can access articles, journals, papers and the like online, all free of charge (the Uni' pays thousands to subscribe to all the stuff on there). If your University has a similar system, and I believe most do, then I'd point you in that direction. Best of luck with it!

Meanwhile, for anyone who's interested, here's an update as to where I'm at... Having looked into the pilot vs automation authority issue, I've chosen to do my project on this and am currently conducting my literature review. I'm finding many issues arising within this argument, such as the loss of manual skills, situational awareness, vigilance, increased complacency (or conversely, distrust in automated systems, largely depending on their operational reliability), the shift from active information processing to passive information receiving, changes in the amount or type of feedback provided to the pilot etc etc, that all result from the introduction of automation in the cockpit. Due to the relatively short time period I have available to complete the work, I'm thinking about focussing in on just one or two of these issues to cover in detail, although which ones I've not yet decided.

Most studies come to the conclusion that a certain level of automation authority results in better overall performance of the human-machine system, compared with a system that gives the human total authority. However there is a point beyond which the share of authority goes too far in favour of the machine, resulting in degraded pilot performance when the automation breaks down.

One thing I have noticed is that most of these studies (at least the ones I have come across) have used students or other non-aviation-affiliated people as test subjects, and hence don't take into consideration the flight deck crew's perception of their loss of authority. It is notable from some of the comments made on this thread that a reduction in pilot authority is generally perceived as a negative thing. I would think most pilots won't be too happy at the thought of having to surrender some proportion of their command to a computer. Whether this has any effect in the real world is not clear, and something which might merit my attention.

At Salford University I am lucky in that I have access to their FNPT II sim and my project supervisor has said there'd be no problem with throwing some current pilots in there and running an experiment on them. I'm not sure as yet what experiment I could devise that would give meaningful data, and so am thinking of leaving that possibility until the second half of the project after xmas. In the meantime I am thinking along the lines of circulating questionnaires among pilots to try and get a feel for their perceptions of issues surrounding increased automation. Including a couple of accident case studies in my report that highlight some of the issues I outlined earlier is something else I'm considering too. Based on what I find from those things I'll look at whether I could come up with a flight sim experiment that would add value to the project.

I'll keep you updated as more progress is made; in the meantime if you have any more input, it'd be warmly received!

Cheers,

Mike.

[soaring_steph]

I spent ages writing a long reply last night, basically thanking Otto Throttle and Overun for your help and details of where I am up to so far and my research list to date; and for some reason it has not published!! Not sure why :*.
When i get a chance after the weekend I will send a similar message but all in all, my point is: thank you!