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Atmospheric turbulence encounters are the leading cause of injuries to passengers and flight crews in non-fatal airline accidents. Federal Aviation Administration statistics show an average of 58 airline passengers are hurt in U.S. turbulence incidents each year. Ninety-eight percent of those injuries happen because people don’t have their seat belts fastened.
Atmospheric turbulence encounters are not only hazardous but they cost the airlines money and time, in the form of re-routing flights, late arrivals, and additional inspections and maintenance to aircraft.
Engineers in NASA's Aviation Safety Program are working to tackle the issue of atmospheric turbulence with new technologies that will provide flight crews with enough advance warning so they can avoid turbulence or advise flight attendants and passengers to sit down and buckle up to avoid injury.
Image left: The E-Turb radar system shows turbulence to pilots in a graphical display. Photo credit: NASA Langley Research Center/Gary Banziger Click on image to view full resolution.
One promising technology called E-Turb, a modified radar unit that can detect turbulence associated with thunderstorms, has been flying on a Delta airliner since the summer of 2004. Delta flight crews have used and evaluated the technology during regularly scheduled flights in the U.S. and South America.
"The E-Turb radar technology is an enhanced radar system that detects atmospheric turbulence by measuring the motions of the moisture in the air," said Jim Watson, senior research engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. "It is a software signal processing upgrade to existing predictive Doppler wind shear systems that are already on airplanes."
NASA teamed with Delta Air Lines, Atlanta; AeroTech Research, Hampton, Va.; and Rockwell Collins, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for the in-service evaluation of the production-prototype airborne radar unit with turbulence hazard prediction capabilities.
Researchers from NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the companies involved are currently evaluating the results of the turbulence prediction radar system tests. If E-Turb is found to help flight crews avoid turbulence, it may be adopted for use on new and existing aircraft.
Image right: Langley researchers Robert Neece (left) and Bruce Kendall (right) try to observe the turbulence radar during a bumpy encounter near thunderstorms on board a NASA research aircraft. Photo credit: NASA Langley Research Center/Jeff Caplan Click on image to view full resolution.
Airliners from Delta are also testing another technology that could help alert pilots to turbulence called the Turbulence Auto Pilot Reporting System. Developed by researchers at NASA Langley and AeroTech Research (USA), Inc., this system displays automatic and timely reports of turbulence encounters immediately on computers on the ground and in the cockpits of other aircraft. The system's processing of encounters takes into account how various aircraft respond to turbulence. Pilots can see the reports for the area ahead of their aircraft, controllers can see reports relative to air traffic, and airline personnel can evaluate the impact on their operations-- all in real-time.
NASA and industry researchers will continue to conduct in-flight evaluations of this system, which has been flying on 123 aircraft worldwide since August 2004, throughout the summer.
NASA Langley Research Center