Energy management and energy state awareness are important concepts in aircraft safetyanalysis. Many loss-of-control accidents can be attributed to poor energy management.Energy-based metrics provide a measurable quantity of the energy state of the aircraft andcan be viewed as an objective currency to evaluate various safety-critical conditions. In thiswork, we have surveyed key energy-based metrics from various domains and identified thechallenges of implementing these metrics for General Aviation operations. Modifications toexisting metrics and definition of some new energy metrics are proposed. A methodologyis developed that can be used to evaluate and visualize the energy metrics. These energymetrics can then be used to understand and enhance General Aviation aircraft safety usingretrospective flight data analysis.
Puranik, T., Harrison, E., Min, S., Jimenez, H., and Mavris, D. N., "Energy Based Metrics for General Aviation Flight Data Record Analysis," Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, June 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.2514/6.2016-3915