99--TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OPPORTUNITY NEW METHOD FOR PITOT-STATIC CALIBRATION:LAR-17857

NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA solicits inquiries from companies interested in obtaining license rights to commercialize, manufacture and market the following technology. License rights may be issued on an exclusive or nonexclusive basis and may include specific fields of use. NASA provides no funding in conjunction with these potential licenses. THE TECHNOLOGY: Scientists at NASA Langley Research Center have developed a new method for calibrating pitot-static air data systems used in aircraft. Pitot-static systems are pressure-based instruments that measure the aircrafts airspeed. These systems must be calibrated in flight to minimize potential error. Current methods that include trailing cone, tower fly-by, and pacer airplane are time and cost intensive, requiring extensive flight time per calibration. NASAs method can reduce this calibration time by up to an order of magnitude, cutting a significant fraction of the cost. In addition, NASAs calibration method enables near real-time monitoring of error in airspeed measurements, which can be used to alert pilots when airspeed instruments are inaccurate or failing. Because of this feature, the technology also has applications in the health usage and monitoring (HUMS) industry. Flight test engineers can be trained to use this method proficiently in 12 days without costly specialized hardware. True airspeed is calculated using measurements from a global positioning system (GPS) by vector summing of ground speed and estimated wind speed. This value is used to estimate actual impact pressure, which is compared with the impact pressure measured by the flight instrumentation for a range of airspeeds. The difference between these values is the error in impact pressure measurements. The optimization process calculates a mathematical model of the pressure error as a function of calibrated airspeed and an estimate of the wind speed and direction. A statistically based maximum likelihood method known as output-error is used to estimate the parameters describing the pressure error model and the wind vector values. This method can work with any airplane with a digital flight data system. To express interest in this opportunity, please respond to [email protected] with the title of this Technology Transfer Opportunity as listed in this FBO notice and your preferred contact information. Please also provide the nature of your interest in the technology along with a brief background of your company. For more information about licensing other NASA-developed technologies, please visit the NASA Technology Transfer Portal at http://technology.nasa.gov/ . These responses are provided to members of NASA Langleys Office of Strategic Analysis and Business Development OSACB for the purpose of promoting public awareness of NASA-developed technology products, and conducting preliminary market research to determine public interest in and potential for future licensing opportunities. If direct licensing interest results from this posting, OSACB will follow the required formal licensing process of posting in the Federal Register. No follow-on procurement is expected to result from responses to this Notice.