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Full-Text Articles in Aviation

Assessing The Methodological Quality Of Aviation Research: A Content Analysis Of Articles Published In Subscription And Open Access Aviation Journals 2014-2016, Isa Tuncman Dec 2020

Assessing The Methodological Quality Of Aviation Research: A Content Analysis Of Articles Published In Subscription And Open Access Aviation Journals 2014-2016, Isa Tuncman

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to determine to what extent aviation research articles were consistent with commonly recommended research protocols. Using a purposive sampling strategy, two subscription and five open access journals published from 2014 to 2016 were targeted, and 139 articles were reviewed using a category based, researcher-developed coding form grounded in commonly accepted research practices presented in educational research methods textbooks. The form reflected models from the medical research community and employed a 3-point scoring rubric: 0 = Not Reported, 1 = Inadequate, and 2 = Adequate. At least two coders reviewed each article, and corresponding Krippendorff …


The Effect Of Intensive Auditory Cues On Flight Passengers’ Safe Behaviors, Tianhua Li Dec 2020

The Effect Of Intensive Auditory Cues On Flight Passengers’ Safe Behaviors, Tianhua Li

Theses and Dissertations

When passengers do not follow in-flight announcements, injuries can occur. It is critical to draw passengers’ attention and help them be aware of the importance of the instructions provided during in-flight announcements. Passengers’ attention can be improved by providing intensive auditory cues before announcements. The auditory cues with intensive acoustic parameters increase the hearers’ perceived level of urgency, and then, they are more likely to perform safer behaviors. Also, when the intensity level increases to an intermediate level, the stimulated persons should have better performance. However, when it increases excessively, their performance may be impaired. The study examined the effect …


The Effects Of Aircraft Use And Available Repar Spares On Aircraft Sortie Generaiton: A Long-Duration Logistical Wargaming Simulationtool, Nathaniel M. Choo Dec 2020

The Effects Of Aircraft Use And Available Repar Spares On Aircraft Sortie Generaiton: A Long-Duration Logistical Wargaming Simulationtool, Nathaniel M. Choo

Theses and Dissertations

A long-duration logistical wargame simulation tool that can provide quick insights into the daily aircraft availability and the daily number of missions accomplished for a variety of operational scenarios is developed. This simulation tool is designed to be a stepwise wargaming support tool for adjudication within long-duration logistical wargames and provides the user many capabilities including, but not limited to, the ability to have multiple bases and types of aircraft. Additionally, the user has the ability to control types of part failures, control parts availability, control maintenance capabilities, and control number of mission scheduled. Finally, the user can account for …


Investigation Of An Avionics Part Deficiencies In Royal Saudi Air Force Fleets, Nasser S. Alanazi Sep 2020

Investigation Of An Avionics Part Deficiencies In Royal Saudi Air Force Fleets, Nasser S. Alanazi

Theses and Dissertations

The Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) is experiencing a shortage in certain avionics parts due to a lack of reliability. This issue is causing a supply chain disturbance in the F1-15 fleet and the Hawk fleet. One of the factors behind this problem is the environmental effects in Saudi Arabia .The study will investigate and analyze the methods for the Improvement Cycle Processes and the Quality Management within the RSAF repair cycle. Finding show that, the discrepancies are rising during summer and fall time due to the environment change, Other finding were addressed in the study.


3d Printing For Solving Part Obscolescence, Ayman G. Alqarni Sep 2020

3d Printing For Solving Part Obscolescence, Ayman G. Alqarni

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to highlight the issue of parts obsolescence and to highlight the possibility of using alternative methods to overcome parts shortage. Specifically, this thesis sought to answer the research question: is the three-dimensional printing technology (3D) an applicable approach to overcome part obsolescence. The research question was answered through data research and survey analysis. Notwithstanding, the diminished manufacturing sources and material shortages (DMSMS) management and other existing approaches, such as forecasting, contracting, and reverse engineering (RE), were discussed briefly in the literature review and profoundly in chapter IV to differentiate among applicable existing solutions toward …


Artificial Intelligence For Helicopter Safety: Head Pose Estimation In The Cockpit, Eric William Feuerstein Aug 2020

Artificial Intelligence For Helicopter Safety: Head Pose Estimation In The Cockpit, Eric William Feuerstein

Theses and Dissertations

The recent impact of deep learning algorithms and their major breakthroughs on various aspects of our lives has led to the idea to investigate the application of these algorithms in different problem spaces. One of the novel areas of investigation is the aviation and air traffic control domain; as it offers a prime opportunity to enhance safety within the aviation community. Of particular importance to this community is improving the safety of rotorcraft operations, as this segment of the aviation industry is subject to a higher fatal accident rate than other segments of the industry. The improvement of safety for …


Airline Brand Experience Passengers’ Perceptions Of The Big Three Carriers In The United States, Sarinthree Udchachone Aug 2020

Airline Brand Experience Passengers’ Perceptions Of The Big Three Carriers In The United States, Sarinthree Udchachone

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to observe passengers’ perceptions about brand experience research in the airline industry by applying a transcendental or descriptive phenomenological methodology designed to evaluate interview transcriptions and organize derived knowledge into defined themes. The NVivo program was utilized to analyze data from textual transcriptions. The experiences of passengers of the Big Three United States legacy carriers, including American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines, were described. The participants comprised three couples and seven individuals, all frequent-flyer members of the Big Three carriers and their partnering global airline alliances. The researcher-constructed instrument was used for …


Set Your Sights High: The Effect Of Heads-Up Displays On Situation Awareness And Performance For Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Summer Lindsey Rebensky May 2020

Set Your Sights High: The Effect Of Heads-Up Displays On Situation Awareness And Performance For Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Summer Lindsey Rebensky

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of two interface designs—traditional and heads-up displays (HUDs)—on situation awareness (SA), performance, and workload for sUAS operations. The study utilized an experimental repeated measures design to determine the relationship between interface design on the various dependent variables through a simulated search and rescue mission. Participants flew two simulated search and rescue missions to find missing persons utilizing traditional and HUD displays. During the missions, participants took pictures of human targets and were queried on their SA using the freeze probe SAGAT approach. Then participants rated their subjective SA using …


General Aviation Airport Runway Incursions: A Qualitative Approach To Examining Reasons For, Barriers To Addressing, And Lessons Learned From Airport Managers' First-Hand Experiences, Indira Maharaj May 2020

General Aviation Airport Runway Incursions: A Qualitative Approach To Examining Reasons For, Barriers To Addressing, And Lessons Learned From Airport Managers' First-Hand Experiences, Indira Maharaj

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was manifold: (a) to understand the reasons for runway incursions (RIs) at general aviation (GA) airports, (b) to describe the barriers to addressing runway incursions at GA airports, and (c) to describe the lessons learned from addressing runway incursions at GA airports. This study was based primarily on a phenomenological research design, which led to a set of inductively derived conjectures. The study’s sample consisted of 10 GA airports that had at least 10 times the number of GA operations than the number of air carrier (commercial) operations as reported in the Air Traffic Activity …


Mc80: Quantifying Effect Of Fleet Health On Sortie Execution In F-16 Fleet, Kyle R. Gladney Mar 2020

Mc80: Quantifying Effect Of Fleet Health On Sortie Execution In F-16 Fleet, Kyle R. Gladney

Theses and Dissertations

By order of the Secretary of Defense, all of the US Air Force's F-16 units were tasked to improve their fleet health to a Mission Capability (MC) rate of 80 percent, as part of a Department of Defense-wide push to make its Critical Aviation Platforms, and the units that employ them, more ready and lethal. This study uses historical fleet health and sortie execution data captured from LIMS-EV (Weapon System Viewer, 2020) to create a multiple regression model that quantifies the value of increased fleet health, defined as either MC rate or Aircraft Availability (AA) rate, in terms of increasing …


Resilient Aircraft Sustainment: Quantifying Resilience Through Asset And Capacity Allocation, Zachary B. Shannon Mar 2020

Resilient Aircraft Sustainment: Quantifying Resilience Through Asset And Capacity Allocation, Zachary B. Shannon

Theses and Dissertations

Decision makers lack a clear, generalizable method to quantify how additional investment in inventory and capacity equates to additional levels of resilience. This research facilitates a deeper understanding of the intricacies and complex interconnectedness of organizational supply chains by monetarily quantifying changes in network resilience. The developed Area under the Curve metric (AUC) is used to quantify the level of demand that each asset allocation can meet during a disruptive event. Due to its applicability across multiple domains, the USAF F-16 repair network in the Pacific theater (PACAF) is modeled utilizing discrete event simulation and used as the illustrating example. …


Sortie-Based Aircraft Component Demand Rate To Predict Requirements, Thomas R. O'Neal Mar 2020

Sortie-Based Aircraft Component Demand Rate To Predict Requirements, Thomas R. O'Neal

Theses and Dissertations

Weapon System Sustainment (WSS) costs are growing at an increasing rate despite the vast efforts to reduce them. Researchers have attributed much of the cost increase to inaccurate demand forecasts for weapon system spare parts. In 2011, the forecast to sustain all United States Air Force (USAF) aircraft was 19% accurate and WSS costs per year have continuously increased. The purpose of this study is to explore a parsimonious change to aircraft component forecasting to reduce costly forecast error. This study substitutes flying hours with sorties for the purpose of demand forecasting. Many F-16 and B-52 spare parts are evaluated …


The Effects Of Funding Gaps On Depot Maintenance Hours, Carlo S. D'Amato Mar 2020

The Effects Of Funding Gaps On Depot Maintenance Hours, Carlo S. D'Amato

Theses and Dissertations

The relationship between expenditures and readiness level is a topic of interest to military senior leaders, defense resource planners, and the American taxpayer alike. Senior leaders within the Air Force (AF) justify increased defense budgets by pointing to the potential adverse effects that decreased funding could have on military readiness. Resource planners within the AF are then tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that budgets are allocated most effectively to maximize the AF's ability to project airpower across a variety of contingency operations. This thesis investigates the relationship between budgets and readiness by examining the relationship between depot level funding …


Predicting Upper Atmospheric Weather Conditions Utilizing Long-Short Term Memory Neural Networks For Aircraft Fuel Efficiency, Garrett A. Alarcon Mar 2020

Predicting Upper Atmospheric Weather Conditions Utilizing Long-Short Term Memory Neural Networks For Aircraft Fuel Efficiency, Garrett A. Alarcon

Theses and Dissertations

Aviation fuel is a major component of the Air Force (AF) budget, and vital for the core mission of the AF. This study investigated the viability of LSTMs to increase the accuracy of deterministic NWP models, while also investigating the ability to reduce model generation time. Increased forecast accuracy for wind speeds could be implemented into existing flight path models to further increase fuel efficiency, while reduced modeling times would allow flight planners to generate a flight plan in rapid response situations. The most viable model consisted of an ensemble of six LSTMs trained o six coordinates. The model's error …


Hybrid Tri-Objective Optimization Of F-15 Fleet Modernization Scheduling, Richard S. Danaher Mar 2020

Hybrid Tri-Objective Optimization Of F-15 Fleet Modernization Scheduling, Richard S. Danaher

Theses and Dissertations

The F-15 weapons system is vital to the Air Forces efforts to obtain air supremacy during conflict. Originally produced almost 50 years ago, technological advancement through systems modifications is necessary to ensure the Eagles lethality and survivability against next-generation adversarial threats. The F-15 Systems Program Office faces challenges to plan aircraft inductions for five fleet modernization programs. Optimal induction schedules are developed using binary-integer linear programming models. Diverse constraints such as manpower, equipment, modification kit availability, minimum operational flight levels, and integration of scheduled depot maintenance reveal that no feasible schedule exists. Two competing objectives representing the value of fully …


Inherent Jeopardy Of Performance Based Contracting Metrics: A Simulation Experiment, Daniel Cherobini Mar 2020

Inherent Jeopardy Of Performance Based Contracting Metrics: A Simulation Experiment, Daniel Cherobini

Theses and Dissertations

There is a growing trend across the world to adopt Performance Based Contracting strategies to support logistics systems. Using these policies, contract payments are strongly related to the performance achieved compared to prespecified metrics. However, managers are not always confident on what are the most suitable performance goals to use in these agreements. As a consequence, contractors struggle to deliver the desired performance results, while aircraft fleets experience an increase in support costs. And when the results are inadequate, leaders are tempted to impose even more performance targets to contractors, willing to exercise more control over the support organization. In …


Optimization Of Airfield Parking And Fuel Asset Dispersal To Maximize Survivability And Mission Capability Level, Ryley R. H. Paquette Mar 2020

Optimization Of Airfield Parking And Fuel Asset Dispersal To Maximize Survivability And Mission Capability Level, Ryley R. H. Paquette

Theses and Dissertations

While the US focus for the majority of the past two decades has been on combatting insurgency and promoting stability in Southwest Asia, strategic focus is beginning to shift toward concerns of conflict with a near-peer state. Such conflict brings with it the risk of ballistic missile attack on air bases. With 26 conflicts worldwide in the past 100 years including attacks on air bases, new doctrine and modeling capacity are needed to enable the Department of Defense to continue use of vulnerable bases during conflict involving ballistic missiles. Several models have been developed to date for Air Force strategic …


Providing Rational For Further Funding Additive Manufacturing Efforts In The Air Force, Trever J. Braunberger Mar 2020

Providing Rational For Further Funding Additive Manufacturing Efforts In The Air Force, Trever J. Braunberger

Theses and Dissertations

Extremely long lead times for legacy aircraft replacement parts often exceed 120 days and cost 3 to 4 times the original price drives a search for alternative manufacturing methods such as additive manufacturing. Currently, the method to procuring a legacy replacement for aircraft such as the C-130 is daunting and at times, impossible. Through a comprehensive knowledge collection of organizational data the Air Force body of knowledge increases and provides actionable data to decision makers which has the potential of dramatically decreasing part wait times and procurement. The proposed, intuitive decision analysis framework mapped out in this research provides relevant …


Undergraduate Pilot Training Attrition: An Analysis Of Individual And Class Composition Component Factors, Christina M. Akers Mar 2020

Undergraduate Pilot Training Attrition: An Analysis Of Individual And Class Composition Component Factors, Christina M. Akers

Theses and Dissertations

The Air Force is working hard to reduce the shortage of nearly 2,000 pilots that threatens the Air Force’s core mission. Officials have focused on increasing retention and training throughput. Despite this, the first Pilot Training Next class graduated in August of 2018 with 13 of the initial 20 students (65.5% graduation rate). The purpose of this research is to explore attrition reduction by understanding how class composition of individual abilities and personalities affects the class graduation rate. Using AFOQT scores, SDI+ scores, PCSM scores, flight hours, and college GPAs, correlations were studied and a simple linear regression was run …


Quantifying The Effects Of Aircraft Engine Upgrades On Operating And Support Costs, Bradford A. Myers Mar 2020

Quantifying The Effects Of Aircraft Engine Upgrades On Operating And Support Costs, Bradford A. Myers

Theses and Dissertations

As research into Operating and Support (O and S) costs matures, the focus can narrow. This research represents a first of its kind for the Air Force; it is an empirical study to analyze the effects of new engines on fuel efficiency and maintenance over those engines they replace. Within this research, new engines are those with distinct Type Series Modification (TMS) designators that appear within categories of Mission Designation System (MDS) aircraft. The only new engines appear on C-5s, C-130s, and C-135s. The inclusion of retired engines brings in two fighter aircraft, F-15s and F-16s. The data source is …