Army 17. 1 Small Business Innovation Research (sbir) Proposal Submission Instructions

1. Hennige, C. W. and Cribbs, R. W., Composite-Bonded Joint Strength Evaluation System, Phase II SBIR Final Report, Project Number 0010195477, 2008. Public: https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/311341

2. Department of Defense Joint Service Specification Guide Aircraft Structures (JSSG-2006)

3. What the Customer Wants. Maintenance-Free and Failure-Free Operating Periods to Improve Overall System Availability and Reliability. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/p010429.pdf

4. Kendall, F., Better Buying Power 3.0 http://www.acq.osd.mil/fo/docs/betterBuyingPower3.0(9Apr15).pdf

KEYWORDS: adhesive bond, composite bonding, NDE bondline, composite structures

A17-005

TITLE: Long-life, Shelf-stable, Wet Layup Laminating Resins and Paste Adhesives

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Materials/Processes

The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals, their country of origin, and what tasks each would accomplish in the statement of work in accordance with section 5.4.c.(8) of the Announcement.

OBJECTIVE: To develop a wet layup laminating resin and a paste adhesive that remain viable in diverse environments for an extended time period, while maintaining the strength, stiffness, and weight efficiency of modern high-strength composite materials.

DESCRIPTION: The Army seeks long-life, shelf-stable, wet layup laminating resins and paste adhesives, to enable improved operational availability and decreased maintenance costs. “Long-life” is defined as a minimum of three years of useful life and an objective of five years of useful life; “shelf-stable” refers to the ability to remain viable in diverse environments. Currently fielded composite repair materials have limited life and shelf stability; six to eighteen months is the useful life of currently fielded composite repair technology, dependent on storage conditions. Current state-of-the-art composite repair techniques include IM7/Benzoxazine prepreg and Hysol EA9359 paste adhesive demonstrating twelve months of useful life and shelf-stability. Under a recent research and development effort, this prepreg / paste adhesive system was used to demonstrate repair of an IM8-F3HT airframe test article, completely restoring the strength of the article. IM7/Benzoxazine prepreg patches were contoured to the damaged surface using sacrificial, low temperature, IM7/EA956 8HS scaffold plies; vacuum bag; and low temperature cure. Afterwards, the contoured patches were removed from the airframe; cured off of the airframe in a 350 °F oven; and bond cured to the airframe with the paste adhesive via vacuum bag pressure. While this composite repair technique proved functional in a laboratory setting, the materials are neither long-life nor shelf-stable. Limited life and shelf stability negatively impact operational availability and maintenance costs; wet layup laminating resins and paste adhesives which are both long-life and shelf-stable are desired.

PHASE I: Effort in this phase shall develop a wet layup laminating resin and a paste adhesive that are long-life and shelf-stable. Proof of concept testing shall be performed to demonstrate the strength, stiffness, and weight efficiency of the wet layup laminating resin and paste adhesive when compared to currently fielded resins and paste adhesives. Additionally, environmental testing, such as testing defined in MIL-STD-810G, shall be performed to verify long-life and shelf-stability of the wet layup laminating resin and paste adhesive. Minimally, environmental testing shall be conducted in accordance with the “Warm Moist Atmosphere Model” at zero altitude defined in MIL-STD-810G as 90°F/32.1°C, greater than or equal to 85% relative humidity, and a dew temperature that is greater than or equal to 85°F/29°C. Required deliverables for this phase shall be a project management plan, progress reports, and a final report. The final report shall document the scientific methodology underlying the concept, anticipated benefits, and lessons learned. Additionally, the final report shall include a cost analysis of the developed technology solution compared to currently fielded resins and paste adhesives.

PHASE II: Effort in this phase shall mature and demonstrate the long-life, shelf-stable wet layup laminating resin and paste adhesive developed in Phase 1 through completion of composite repair. Strength and environmental testing of the composite repair shall be completed to demonstrate a minimum strength, stiffness, and weight efficiency of a modern, high-strength composite material system such as IM7/8552. Minimally, environmental testing in accordance with the “Warm Moist Air Model” at zero altitude as defined in MIL-STD-810G shall be completed. The composite repair methodology and procedure shall be documented such that independent verification and validation by a third party can be accomplished. Other required deliverables for this phase shall be a project management plan, progress reports, test plans, composite repair samples for independent testing, and a final report. The final report shall document the Phase 2 effort in detail, lessons learned, and the future plan for commercializing the developed technology solution.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Effort in this phase shall further mature and commercialize the long-life, shelf-stable, wet layup laminating resin and paste adhesive for fielded composite repair. Consideration shall be given to improving manufacturing readiness level, generation of material allowables through testing, and generation of bonded joint analysis methodology. The vision for long-life, shelf-stable, wet layup laminating resins and paste adhesives is to address the issue of rapidly expiring composite repair materials while enabling fielded composite repairs in diverse environments. Future Vertical Lift, legacy Army aircraft, and the commercial aircraft industry are likely transition paths for the technology solution

REFERENCES:

1. Baker, A. “Development of a Hard-Patch Approach for Scarf Repair of Composite Structure.” Retrieved June 14, 2016 from http://dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a458447.pdf

2. Baker, A., Chester, R., and Mazza, J. “Bonded Repair Technology for Aging Aircraft.” Retrieved June 14, 2016 from http://dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADP01408

3. Harris, C. and Shuart, M. “An Assessment of the State-of-the-Art in the Design and Manufacturing of Large Composite Structures For Aerospace Vehicles.” Retrieved June 14, 2016, from http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20040086015.pdf

4. Sutter, D. “Three-Dimensional Analysis of a Composite Repair and the Effect of Overply Shape Variation on Structural Efficiency.” Retrieved June 14, 2016 from http://dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA469311

5. Tomblin, J., Salah, L., Welch, J., and Borgman, M. “Bonded Repair of Aircraft Composite Sandwich Structures.” Retrieved June 14, 2016, from http://www.tc.faa.gov/its/worldpac/techrpt/ar03-74.pdf

KEYWORDS: Long-Life, Shelf-Stable, Wet Layup Laminating Resin, Paste Adhesive, Composite Repair, Diverse Environments

A17-006

TITLE: Model-Based Testing of Integrated Aviation Mission Systems

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Air Platform

The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals, their country of origin, and what tasks each would accomplish in the statement of work in accordance with section 5.4.c.(8) of the Announcement.

OBJECTIVE: Reduce aviation mission system integration testing time and effort and increase assurance by developing testing tools that support a model-based system development process. Develop a software tool that will check instrumentation data collected from an integrated mission system to see if the observed system behaviors of an integrated mission system conforms to required and allowed behaviors defined in an Architectural Analysis and Design Language (AADL) model of the integrated aviation software and hardware mission system.

DESCRIPTION: Model-Based Engineering (MBE) is widely-used for design, analysis and implementation of mission system components, including some model-based testing of components. System integration testing currently depends largely on tests that are manually created from structured natural language specifications augmented with engineering annotations and diagrams. Confirming that the test results are correct is also a manually-intensive and error-prone process. Future aviation mission systems will use Model-Based System Engineering (MBSE) methods for integrated system requirements and architecture definition. Department of Defense (DoD) programs, including the Joint Multi-Role (JMR) project for the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) unmanned aerial systems research, and commercial industry’s Aerospace Vehicle Systems Institute’s Systems (AVSI) Architecture Virtual Integration (SAVI) project, are using models of integrated systems captured in the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL). A variety of existing analyses can be used verify and validate these aviation mission system models during the early development phase. However, methods and supporting tools are needed to provide assurance that as-built integrated aviation mission systems comply with their requirements specified in an architecture-level model. Note that it is expected that future mission system requirements can and will be captured in architectural models.

Model-based testing of a physical instance of an integrated aviation mission system (referred to as the System Under Test or SUT) are tests that are done on the SUT to see if it conforms to its specification model. Model-based testing of integrated aviation mission systems poses some difficult challenges. Controllability and observability of such systems may be limited. An example is model-based checking of flight test data of the realized system, where the available data is limited by the capabilities of onboard instrumentation, and the test inputs are outside the control of the model-based testing tools. A primary goal of this effort is a tool that checks to see if available observation data conforms to behaviors required and allowed by the specification model. The supplied capability should not be limited to tests generated only by the supplied tools, the tools should be usable with existing test suites (i.e., automatic test generation is not the primary goal of this solicitation). The goal is not a new controllability or instrumentation capability; solutions should adapt to existing test execution and instrumentation capabilities with minimal intrusiveness and effort. Proposers should define metrics to be used to determine tool coverage and thoroughness as part of their proposal (e.g., compute model-based test coverage metrics). The tool should minimize the assumptions and requirements placed on the instrumentation in the SUT so that it can be used with a variety of instrumentation and testbed capabilities.

At the architectural level, many defects are due to inconsistencies between the protocols used by different components that interact with each other. Many defects are due to incorrect coordination of system modes such as start-up, recovery, or operating modes. The tool should check for protocol inconsistencies, mis-coordination of system modes of operation, and timing defects.

Instrumentation data is collected at multiple different points in an aviation mission system. The content and format used for instrumentation data and the degree to which causality and temporal relationships are captured or can be inferred may vary. Some events of interest may not be captured (e.g., may be hidden, may be missed in sampling). The tool should be adaptable to handle variability in the available instrumentation data such as with word formats and sampling rates. The tool should provide features to manage large amounts of instrumentation data collected from a large and complex system.

PHASE I: Demonstrate prototype AADL tool(s) that check notional instrumentation data collected from a pseudo-real-time simulation or real-time laboratory prototype against an architectural model containing a defined selected set of AADL properties related to timing and scheduling, flow, and/or behavior specifications for a notional distributed system-under-test (SUT) (distributed means there should be multiple sets of instrumentation data collected at different observation points in the system). Assess scalability to very large data sets for large and complex models and systems. Assess the likelihood of false positive and false negative results and evaluate tool capabilities to deal with these cases. Performers are expected to provide example models and instrumentation data for the Phase I demonstration. Success for Phase I will include proving the tool can verify the instrumentation data matches the architecture modeled flow, mode and/or behavior specification. Expected technology readiness level (TRL) for end of Phase I is TRL 3.

PHASE II: Extend the set of AADL features supported and mature the tool for use by early adopters. These would include verifying properties of the integrated system related to safety and security. Demonstrate and evaluate the tool using data collected from an instrumented distributed real-time system (e.g., data from an DoD aviation SIL or aircraft). Implement features that allow the tool to be adapted to a range of SUTs and a variety of instrumentation formats and capabilities. Optimize relative to a proposed set of performance, usability, etc. quality metrics. Success for phase II will include ensuring that scalability can be achieved. Test will be conducted using data sets and models that are representative of large and complex aviation mission systems to prove scalability. Also, the tools will be evaluated against a government defined set of quality metrics. Expected technology readiness level (TRL) for end of Phase II is TRL 6.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Military application: A mature tool with an adaptor for instrumentation data collected from a specific mission system, either a prototype mission system or for instrumentation data collected during flight testing, would benefit any DOD or NASA mission system developer or tester. Commercial application: A similar tool would benefit commercial vehicles such as civil aviation and automotive. Success will include transitioning to a product of use to industry and government.

REFERENCES:

1. Patrick Reynolds, Charles Killian, Janet L. Wiener, Jeffrey C. Mogul, Mehul A. Shah and Amin Vahdat, “Pip: Detecting the Unexpected in Distributed Systems,” 3rd Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, May 2006, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jeffrey_Mogul/publication/22083203

2. Saddek Bensalem, Marius Bozga, Moez Krichen and Stavros Tripakis, “Testing Conformance of Real-Time Applications by Automatic Generation of Observers,” Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Runtime Verification, January 2005. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Moez_Krichen/publication/222561659_Testi

3. Simon Perathoner, Ernesto Wandeler, Lothar Thiele, Arne Hamann, Simon Schliecker, Rafik Henia, Razvan Racu, Rolf Ernst and Michael Gonzalex Harbour, “Influence of Different System Abstractions on the Performance Analysis of Distributed Real-Time Systems,” Proceedings of the 7th ACM & IEEE International

4. AADL wiki: https://wiki.sei.cmu.edu/aadl/index.php/Main_Page

KEYWORDS: Model-Based System Engineering (MBSE), Model Based Engineering (MBE), Model-Based Testing, architecture description language, AADL, Cyber Physical Systems, Avionics, Aviation, Mission Systems

A17-007

TITLE: Rapid Configuration of Heterogeneous Collaborative Aviation System-of-Systems Simulations

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Air Platform

OBJECTIVE: Develop a tool suite for supporting rapid integration of aviation mission system prototype equipment and emulators in System Integration Labs (SILs) and then into federated System-of-Systems (SoS) test and evaluation simulations. Given an architecture description language model specified in the SAE AS 5506 Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) of a mission system and an overall federation of simulations, provide a suite of tools to analyze that model to assure important quality metrics such as performance, timing, latency, safety, security and interface compatibility and automatically generate the configuration data needed to assemble and execute the overall federated simulation. The tool suite should provide a capability that allows collaborating organizations to assemble and “test fly” aviation mission systems in various configurations and stages of development in simulated aviation mission scenarios.

DESCRIPTION: Modeling and simulation of Systems-of-Systems (SoS) pose complex software and system integration problems, especially where live avionics or ancillary equipment must be combined with simulations. There are increasing demands to create a larger variety of configurations quickly, for example for equipment evaluation and training exercises. Strict requirements (e.g., security, performance, assurance of correctness, etc.) must be met. Model-based methods to specify, verify, and automate the integration and operation of aviation related SoS simulations that include the architectural software, hardware system execution behavior are needed, analogous to the model-based system and architecture integration methods and tools that will be used to develop the aviation/weapon system physical platforms.

A number of simulation architectures (protocols) have been developed for collaborative simulation, such as Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) and High Level Architecture (HLA) within the human-in-the-loop and federated SoS simulation domains. However, it is a challenge to integrate a mixture of live equipment and simulations with these protocols. Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA) and Common Training Instrumentation Architecture (CTIA) have been developed to address these issues, but only within the live training domain. With aviation mission systems, several hardware and software operating environment standards have been defined to facilitate mission system integration and interoperability, such as the Hardware Open Systems Technologies (HOST™) and Future Airborne Capabilities Environment (FACE™). In addition, the Architecture Analysis & Design Language (AADL) provides a means for predictive analysis of integrated execution behavior, analysis of critical architectural properties and generative integration.

What is needed is a model-based approach to specify, integrate, and verify heterogeneous SIL and SoS simulations that include aviation mission systems during the early development and evaluation phases. This tool would bridge the development and the test/training domains. Creating this capability requires a selection and extension of existing tools together with some new model based tool development. The suite should use one or more standard collaborative simulation architectures/protocols, such as one or more of those cited above. The generated federated behavior configuration should include runtime communication characteristics of each federated component, such as messaging frequencies and latencies, inter-federate dependencies, messaging paradigm(s), and processing rates and latencies. Typical avionics bus interconnections such as MIL-STD-1553, ARINC 429, ARINC 664/AFDX, IEEE 802.3 Ethernet and Time Triggered Ethernet (TTE) should be considered. This capability will reduce the cost of system integration testing in a SIL or distributed simulation environment by reducing operator and participant downtime during configuration. This capability will increase the validation of early equipment prototypes using simulated use cases and increase the availability of tailored aviation training simulations by making such SoS federations more affordable.

Department of Defense (DoD) programs, including the Joint Multi-Role (JMR) project for the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) unmanned aerial systems research, and commercial industry’s Aerospace Vehicle Systems Institute’s Systems (AVSI) Architecture Virtual Integration (SAVI) project, are using models of integrated systems captured in the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL). AADL is an industry standard means for describing the components of a real-time system and how they are integrated to form an overall system, which is applicable to the defense market and beyond. Tools capable of reasoning about AADL will be well positioned for commercialization (see Phase III below).

The tools developed on this effort should be compatible with existing AADL analysis tools (such as security, timing, and interface consistency) to provide assurance that the configured system will behave as defined in the architectural specification. This cohesion between the model and the simulation environment should provide evidence that may streamline Verification, Validation & Accreditation (VV&A) of the overall SIL and/or SoS federation. For example, by leveraging security analyses of the AADL model with automated configuration and verification, it should be possible to demonstrate that the overall simulation satisfies the security requirements for specific exercises.

PHASE I: Demonstrate a tool or tool suite to execute a simulation using both hard-real time and soft real-time components in a federated aviation system running in HLA, DIS, or a similar standard framework. Success for phase I will include demonstration of the generation of configuration for the simulation and verification of the specification of that simulation against the architecture model defined in AADL. Expected technology readiness level (TRL) for end of Phase I is TRL 3.

PHASE II: Mature the tool or tool-suite based on the Phase I results to provide a user-friendly product. Success will include the development and demonstration of a workflow that generates a configuration from AADL, exercises it using a federated simulation framework, and verifies requirements stated in an AADL model of the architecture for the simulated system. Expected technology readiness level (TRL) for end of Phase II is TRL 5 or 6.

PHASE III DUAL USE APPLICATIONS: Phase III Dual Use Applications: Simulation of SoS with hard real-time constraints is increasingly applicable as automobiles, aircraft, and other vehicles become more interconnected. Medical Device manufacturers are also starting to use AADL to describe their systems, which also have a mix of hard and soft real-time requirements and for which there is demand for early-phase pre-clinical-trial evaluation using simulations. Success will include transitioning to a product of use to industry and government.

REFERENCES:

1. Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization: https://www.sisostds.org/

2. Distributed Interactive Simulation Standard: https://standards.ieee.org/findstds/standard/1278.2-2015.html

3. High Level Architecture Simulation: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=694563&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel4%2F5662%2F15168%2F00694563.pdf%3Farnumber%3D694563

4. Test and Training Enabling Architecture, http://www.ndia.org/Divisions/Divisions/SystemsEngineering/Documents/Committees/M_S%20Committee/2013/August2012/NDIA-SE-MS_2012-08-21_Powell.pdf