Case study: safety analysis of the NASA/Boeing fly-by-light airplane using a new reliability tool

Abstract

This paper is a follow-on to a previous paper (Nicol et al., see ibid., 1995), in which a new reliability tool called reliability performance module (RPM) was described. Since that time, RPM has been used to perform a safety analysis trade study of the primary flight control system (PFCS) architectures proposed for the joint NASA/Boeing fly-by-light/power-by-wire (FBL/PBW) airplane. The purposes of this paper are to: relate experiences and lessons learned from using RPM on the FBL/PBW safety analysis; and present the results of the safety analysis. The conclusions are that: RPM is a powerful tool for performing reliability analyses of complex systems; and the proposed FBL/PBW PFCS architectures meet all of the safety requirements except for one related to spoilers.