Problem Solving

Problem Solving

By J.R. Wilson

When the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory was created in 1917, just as the United States entered World War I, the intent was to build a top-scale aerodynamics research facility and infrastructure, along with a cadre of the top engineers and researchers the country then had in the fledgling realm of aviation. As the lab and its facilities grew, both in size and reputation, virtually every company and government agency involved in aviation increasingly turned to Langley for problem-solving – from emergency response calls stemming from a catastrophic failure to help in understanding a unique structural issue.

Eventually, the reputation of Langley engineers and researchers led others, outside aviation – and later, space – to call on them for help.

“We are a fundamental R&D center, so we have a great deal of both breadth and depth in fundamental physics and have the labs and test facilities to do in-depth analysis,” noted Walt Engelund, Director of the Space Technology and Exploration Directorate. “It is the decades of deep subject matter expertise we have developed in a lot of the key fundamental flight sciences disciplines that was part of the reason why NASA located NESC here, for both the culture, expertise and facilities at Langley.”

NESC – the NASA Engineering and Safety Center – was stood up as a tenant organization at Langley in 2004, largely as a result of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident investigation, according to William Prosser, a Technical Fellow for Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) at the safety center.

“In particular, the report referenced not having a strong independent engineering organization within NASA.

“There often is not one perfect solution to a problem but a number, some with more risk, others with a better schedule or budget path, etc.,” Prosser said. “So often we are trying to find solutions to particular engineering problems on an aircraft or spacecraft and the debate often goes down programmatic lines involving the fastest and least expensive solution, while the engineering side is looking for the best technical solution with the lowest risk. There is and should be a healthy tension between the two – and on really important problems, it is important to have a truly independent organization come in and look at things.”

Langley’s investigation into the causes of the catastrophic fuselage structural failure of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 led the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to ensure the safety of airline passengers by initiating the Aging Airplane Program.

AP Photo/ Star Bulletin/ Dennis Oda

Since World War I, the calls on Langley expertise and facilities have fallen into two broad categories: Problem-solving, many of which are quickly dealt with at the individual engineer or team level, and emergency response – or 911 calls – that involve loss of life, life-threatening situations, or major program delays and require weeks or months to resolve and the involvement of multiple personnel and facilities.

“Problem-solving and 911 are different things. We solve problems all the time for DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] or Boeing or some other agency or company. Most are aerospace, but there are a few that are not,” Edward Healy, Langley’s Director of Engineering, explained.

“And the aerospace community is changing,” he said. “Amazon is now an aerospace company. Even Uber is developing an aerospace capability.”

Since the creation of NESC, most of the 911 calls have gone to it – although often routed to Langley engineers and facilities for resolution. Problem-solving calls still often go directly to a Langley engineer or branch head.

A Delta II rocket on Pad 17B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Langley helped solve a control problem and return the booster to flight after problems had forced a suspension of launches.

NASA Photo

“Langley has a lot of experts in a lot of various fields. We are a research center, which means our folks understand the basic principles, such as how a structure is formed or how a crack propagates. We also have a long heritage of taking things to flight, from some of the country’s original aircraft to the Mercury and Viking space programs. That combination has made us a place where people come for difficult problems they can’t solve on their own,” Healy said.

“Many calls that used to come into Langley now come into the NESC at Langley … but in terms of major calls about serious problems, such as the Toyota unintended acceleration issue, or the Chilean miners, only two or three times a year.”

Chilean President Sebastián Piñera watches the first dry run of the descent of the Phoenix 2 rescue capsule that would save the 33 trapped miners at the San Jose mine near Copiapó, Chile, Oct. 12, 2010. NASA engineers and experts suggested 75 design features for the rescue capsule, most of which were adopted in the successful design.

Government Of Chile Photo By Hugo Infante

In August 2010, a copper mine in northern Chile collapsed, trapping 33 miners. After 17 days of intense digging and searching, all 33 were found to still be alive, but rescuing them from a blocked tunnel more than 2,000 feet beneath the surface of Chile’s Atacama Desert seemed nearly impossible. Concerned about the miners’ medical and psychological condition, the Chilean government called on NASA’s experience in harsh environments.

Two doctors and a psychologist from Johnson Space Center in Houston were sent to the site, joined by Langley principal engineer Clint Cragg, a retired Navy submarine commander and a founding member of NESC. Cragg met with engineers from the Chilean navy and suggested NASA might help design a rescue capsule. On his return to the United States he put together a team of engineers from almost every NASA center. After three days, they sent the Chilean Minister of Health a 13-page document with 75 suggested design features. Two months after they were trapped, all of the miners were successfully rescued using a 13-foot-long steel cage incorporating most of the NASA team’s recommendations.

“We got involved in the Chilean miner situation because the miners’ isolation and confinement in a tight space was similar to long-duration space missions,” Prosser explained. “And the design and construction of the rescue capsule they used to bring them up out of the mine was, in some ways, analogous to the design of a spaceflight vehicle, including consideration for medical care and life support during transit, as during the design phase they thought it might take up to a half hour per person to bring them up. So we looked at it as we would a space capsule in terms of environmental loads, life support, and other issues.

“The Toyota problem involved electrical engineering and the vehicle’s computer control system,” said Prosser. “Our teams have a lot of expertise in investigating flight software and control systems and a lot of that expertise was applied to the Toyota control system to try to find issues that might have led to those problems.”

The bulk of Langley’s problem-solving efforts from World War I through World War II involved aeronautical troubleshooting for the military, which continued through the end of the century, such as the work Langley aerodynamics engineers did in the late 1990s, helping the Navy resolve a wing-drop problem they couldn’t understand with the new F/A-18E Super Hornet.

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board, Marion Blakey, and NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe came to NASA Langley in 2002 to inspect the tail section from American Airlines Flight 587, which crashed off Long Island, New York, in November 2001. Langley researchers studied the large composite piece and helped determine the cause of the accident.

NTSB Photo

But during peacetime, they also were called upon to help resolve problems involving commercial aviation and some non-aviation concerns, as well as space-related issues.

“On Nov. 12, 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 crashed off Long Island [New York]. They brought the composite tail section to Langley to determine what happened,” Healy recalled, noting Langley is known as a center of excellence for composite structural materials. “Another was Otis Elevator Co., which was having problems with its elevators near coastlines corroding. Our structures group looked at it and how cracks formed on the elevator cables, which led to some design changes.

“In 2005, the Air Force was having a control problem with the Delta II Heavy rocket during transonic flight, which led to a suspension of launches until it was solved. They asked us to conduct some tests; we suggested some smaller tests than they had requested and recommended some changes in the control system, which solved the problem.”

Prosser noted another airliner accident in which Langley not only helped determine the cause, but set the stage for changes in engineering design and safety practices across the aviation industry.

“There was a lot of work done after the Aloha Airlines accident in the 1980s [in which a section of the top fuselage tore away in flight]. The FAA’s Aging Aircraft Program came out of Langley’s investigation into that, to help improve and understand not only what led to that accident, but also to improve the safety of all aircraft as a result,” he said.

Engelund, who was chief engineer in NESC from 2009 to 2013, then chief engineer at Langley before taking his current job, added some other non-aviation and space-related examples of Langley’s problem-solving history.

“Before the NESC, the National Archives was having problems with atmospheric gases leaking into the display holding the original Declaration of Independence. Langley scientists made measurements of the gases inside the case and helped redesign it. And in the early 1970s, a Langley engineer was asked to validate the authenticity of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” he said.

The Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket, which has launched several satellites into orbit, suffered aerodynamic issues at one point in its development that were resolved by Langley engineers.

NASA Photo

“In the 1960s, our work on the lunar mapping program led to our work on the Mars Viking landers in the 1970s and development of the space shuttle, looking at flight controls and trajectory analysis,” Engelund said. “The 1995 Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL air-launched rocket failure was a NASA 911 call. It turned out to be an aerodynamics problem, which made Langley the place to go to figure out what happened.”

Langley was created 100 years ago to “solve the problems of flight with a view to practical solutions.” The first problem Langley was asked to solve was engine cooling in biplanes with open radial engines. Fred Weick led a team that used the Propeller Research Tunnel to develop engine cowlings that also helped cool engines. In 1929, the lab received a Collier Trophy – its first – for the cowling.

But while NESC is a tenant at Langley, reporting directly to NASA Headquarters Office of the Chief Engineer, Prosser sees the two as closely tied, in history as well as present-day calls for help, and believes NESC has benefitted Langley.

An F/A-18E Super Hornet from the Tophatters of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 14 participates in an air power demonstration over the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74). Langley helped find a solution to the Super Hornet’s “wing-drop” problem.

U.S. Navy Photo By Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Ignacio D. Perez

“Certainly in NDE,” he said. “Historically Langley was a research organization that occasionally was brought into investigations on flight vehicles. But because of NESC, there definitely have been a lot more activities in which Langley expertise has been called upon that might not have been the case had NESC not been here.”

The benefits extend beyond Langley and NASA. “We contribute to a lot of things that are seen and some that aren’t seen by the public,” Healy added. “We do a lot of work on aircraft, both military and commercial. In the late ’90s, the NASA safety program, which was headquartered at Langley at the time, set a bold goal to reduce aircraft accidents by 90 percent within 20 years, and they achieved that goal.”

And earlier in the decade, Langley engineers wrapped up development of wind shear detection technology to help pilots detect microbursts, which are localized sudden, short-lived strong downdrafts that can cause an aircraft to lose altitude suddenly. That predictive radar is now mandatory equipment on U.S. airliners.