Energy-Based Metrics for Safety Analysis of General Aviation Operations

Energy management and energy state awareness are important concepts in aircraft safety analysis. Many loss-of-control accidents are correlated to poor energy management. Energy-based metrics provide a measurable quantity of the energy state of the aircraft and can be viewed as an objective currency to evaluate various safety-critical conditions. In this work, key energy-based metrics are surveyed from various domains and the challenges of implementing these metrics for general aviation operations are identified. Modifications to existing metrics and the definition of some new energy metrics are proposed. A methodology is developed that can be used to unify and implement all the energy metrics. Two case studies are demonstrated that highlight the potential value of energy metrics in a retrospective flight data analysis setting.