Methods and tools to better analyse systems safety throughout an aircraft’s life cycle
Customer demands, industry innovations and global competition all combine to increase the pressure on the aeronautical industry to push the boundaries of design. The demand can be to go faster, travel lighter or create less waste. Whatever the challenge, the aeronautical industry must always keep safety in mind. It is the industry’s responsibility to ensure that safety is not sacrificed in the pursuit of sleeker, quicker, more efficient aircraft. Even when pressures demand a cut in construction time, there should be no decrease in the amount of systems testing. The EU-funded MISSA (More integrated systems safety assessment) project set out to speed up processes while ensuring no shortcuts are taken on safety. Project partners developed methods and tools to support safety modelling and analysis at the aircraft, systems architecture and systems implementation levels. They also took into account aspects of systems development related to safety argumentation, evidence synthesis, traceability and configuration control. Specifically, researchers developed functional modelling, qualitative and quantitative requirements, and safe space allocation and optimisation methods and tools. They improved reasoning algorithms that were used to analyse individual systems and combinations of systems. Techniques were also devised to facilitate the review of the vast number of results that the approaches yielded. Lastly, the MISSA team looked at how the different safety models and analyses could be used and to what extent they should be used as evidence for main and supportive arguments with respect to certification and safety. MISSA innovations will lead to a reduction in the time to complete subsequent design iterations, thus enabling European aeronautical companies to produce better products faster. With less development costs and greater levels of performance, the project should ultimately strengthen European aviation’s position in a competitive global industry. For more information, please see MISSA Research Gate.
Keywords
Aircraft, safety analysis, aeronautical, MISSA, systems safety assessment
