Resource Allocation for Airliner Safety: A Design Perspective on Dealing with the Unexpected in Complex Systems

该奖项的研究目标是模拟飞机制造商、航空业及其监管机构所使用的流程对客机安全的贡献，并探讨其对客机结构设计的影响。这将使飞机设计师能够向客户展示是在设计更高的飞机安全性还是通过维护和培训程序实现相同安全水平之间的选择。受美国航空公司一架飞机因极端方向舵指令导致坠毁的启发，该研究还将探索一种通过模拟飞行员极端行为来减少意外故障的新方法。因此，该研究通过系统地揭示意外和未建模的故障场景的过程以及将操作员纳入其中，解决了当前复杂系统设计框架中的严重缺陷。如果成功，该研究将为飞机制造商、航空公司、国会和总统提供有关以更低的成本提高安全性的策略的见解，从而在国家层面实现更有效的资源配置。这可以帮助做出将资源用于安全研究、向飞机制造商提供税收优惠、维护和飞行员培训以及法规和事故调查的决策。尽管拟议的研究重点是飞机结构，但相同的框架可以适用于任何复杂的工程系统，其安全性取决于整个生命周期中的一系列过程。这包括基础设施系统，其可靠性直接关系到公共安全。博士学位国际联合博士生学位课程将加强国际合作，并将从代表性不足的群体中招募一名本科生进行研究。两门研究生和本科生课程将与这项研究紧密结合。研究成果将在各种会议和期刊场所广泛传播，以产生最大的影响。

The research objective of this award is to model the contributions to airliner safety of processes used by aircraft builders, the airline industry and their regulators and to explore their impact on airliner structural design. This will allow an aircraft designer to present to a customer the choice between designing more safety into the airplane versus achieving the same level of safety though maintenance and training procedures. Inspired by a crash of an American Airlines airplane due to extreme rudder commands, the research will also explore a new approach for reducing unexpected failures by simulations of extreme behavior by a pilot. The research thus addresses a critical lack in the current design framework of complex systems by systematically uncovering processes of unexpected and un-modeled failure scenarios and by including operators? extreme behavior into the design and safety assessment.If successful, the research will provide insight for aircraft builders, airlines, Congress and the President on strategies to improve safety at less cost, resulting in more efficient resource allocation at the national level. This can help decisions on directing resources to safety research, tax incentives to aircraft builders, maintenance and pilot training and regulations and accident investigations. Although the proposed research focuses on aircraft structures, the same frameworks can be applicable to any complex engineering system whose safety depends on a sequence of processes throughout its life cycle. This includes infrastructural systems, whose reliability is directly related to public safety. A Ph.D. student from an international joint Ph.D. degree program will enhance international collaboration, and an undergraduate student will be recruited for research from underrepresented groups. Two graduate and undergraduate courses will closely be integrated with this research. The research results will be widely distributed for maximum impact in a variety of conference and journal venues.