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工艺对客机安全的贡献，并探索它们对客机结构设计的影响。这将允许飞机设计师向客户展示在设计更安全的飞机和通过维护和培训程序实现相同级别的安全之间的选择。受美国航空公司一架飞机因极端方向舵指令而坠毁的启发，这项研究还将探索一种通过模拟飞行员的极端行为来减少意外故障的新方法。因此，这项研究解决了当前复杂系统设计框架中的一个严重缺陷，系统地揭示了意外和未建模故障场景的过程，并纳入了操作员？如果成功，这项研究将为飞机制造商、航空公司、国会和总统提供关于以更低成本提高安全性的战略的见解，从而在国家层面上更有效地分配资源。这有助于决定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监管和事故调查。虽然拟议的研究集中在飞机结构上，但同样的框架也可以适用于任何复杂的工程系统，其安全性取决于其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。一名来自国际联合博士学位项目的博士生将加强国际合作，一名本科生将被从代表性不足的群体中招募进行研究。两门研究生和本科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分发，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.