RJ Lee Group develops Big Data bridge for Air Force past and future designs

Photo credit: Fraunhofer IPT

Validation of aerospace components is critical since the failure of a component in the field can result in the loss of life or aircraft. Engine and flight stakeholders need to assess specific component behavior with real decision-enabling information, rather than volumes of data.With funding from the Air Force Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer program, RJ Lee Group (RJLG) developed the Test Data Aggregation and Analytical System (TDAAS). The technology makes vast, disparate archives of scientific and engineering information available to drive real-time, knowledgeable decisions. TDAAS locates data to answer difficult questions driving design, development, and deployment of defense systems.

TDAAS helps eliminate re-engineering costs and has reduced the time it takes to find test data and related documents, allowing for hundreds more analysis iterations.

Test data at Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC) test facilities exceed 1petabyte (1million gigabytes) in size, spread across countless unrelated databases. Engineers are increasingly challenged to provide accurate and insightful analysis in a timely manner. Improved searching and data correlation capabilities and processes can better identify and discover meaningful information about turbine engine propulsion, aerodynamics of systems and ordinances, and space systems.

“Every day, scientists, engineers, and analysts have to rely on human memory and are often not able to find the information from a similar test or are unable to trust the prior test result due to a lack of complete documentation, and this leads to them doing new testing and analysis which increases sustainment costs,” says program manager Brandon Hoffman. “Across the Department of Defense there is a great need to collect, index, and link this type of information together in a way that provides meaning to future or derived works across multiple locations and sources. TDAAS enables the ability to connect to these multiple locations and sources, making all of the information searchable without changing the data’s original location or owner.”

Klaus Schug, a chief architect at Arnold AFB, says, “TDAAS has increased the amount of information accessible by allowing individuals to add their own data and analysis results directly into TDAAS for access to all analysts. The potential for the elimination of billions of dollars of reengineering costs through the application of past lessons learned is one of the best value propositions.”

The success of the SBIR led to additional funding through a Rapid Innovation Fund (RIF) program contract for RJLG to mature the TDAAS prototype to an operational production system. At completion of the RIF contract, RJLG will have helped transition TDAAS to production at AEDC, providing users with understanding of systems cost, design, and performance.

Arnold Air Force Base

www.arnold.af.mil