The Aircraft System Safety Assessment in Four Steps

There’s a lot to consider when developing and engineering aircraft. All those considerations come with a lot of QA and analysis. If only more people knew how many assessments like these occurred, fear of flying would be a thing of the past. Ultimately, all the trials and tests come down to ensuring safe, reliable flights, no matter the conditions, cargo, or crew. For aircraft systems specifically, the multistep process gets lengthy and difficult to navigate at times. So, we developed a four-step review covering the key milestones in aircraft system safety assessment, centered around the primary standard, ARP-4761A. First, a Continue Reading > > >

3-Step Guide to Defining Requirements for DO-178C Software Development

To verify and complete any DO-178C guided software project, every part of that project needs to be requirements driven.   Requirements are what enable an avionics software project as a whole, and act as a “control group” throughout the rest of the project’s lifecycle. And it should go without saying that control is key in avionics and flying aircraft, benefiting every project and function of the industry. Most aerospace professionals know that building requirements takes careful consideration, read: time. But if you have a good plan for building your requirements definitions, like the three-step approach ConsuNova developed to help said Continue Reading > > >

The Aerospace Coverage Sack: Structural Coverage Analysis in DO-178C Verification

Sunday marks the end of the 2022 NFL season with the stupendous spectacle that is the Super Bowl. So, it should be no surprise that (American) football jargon was in the ConsuNova air this week. The “Power sweep,” “nickel package,” and “icing the kicker” are just a few of the phrases expressed on “any given Sunday,” though one stands out as an avionics and aerospace crossover: “the coverage sack.” For good measure, put simply, a “coverage sack” occurs when the defending team tackles the quarterback because no receiver was “open” to receive a pass. Though the analogy is a stretch, Continue Reading > > >

It All Starts with DAL

I was tempted to title this article “DAL starts with DAL,” the first abbreviation read as if to say the should-never-exist contraction “it’DAL…” and I’m glad I didn’t. The beginning of any project, be it writing an article or developing aerospace software, is crucial. Arguably, it’s the most crucial piece of its success. For virtually every avionics and aerospace project type or discipline, it really does “all start with DAL.” DALs, Design Assurance Levels, are the key measures assigned to software and hardware functions used to determine the level of stringency applied to different components of an avionics system. Be Continue Reading > > >

Preparing for Growth: How DO254 Will help You Meet Future Demands

Chock-full of market fluctuations, the unusual series of unfortunate events of 2020 have affected the financial forecasts of every industry and business. Though those forecasts have been revised and re-revised throughout the year, it’s clear that a 2021 (and beyond) rebound is expected in most markets, and aerospace is no exception. Prior to Covid, average growth was expected to be around 2% a year for the next 20 years. Though it’s true that efforts from virtually every nation on Earth have created short term slow downs, virtually all of the industries and services that support the aerospace market are projected to rise in 2021 as the Continue Reading > > >

Top Four Reasons You Need DO-254 Training

Modern aircraft are wondrous feats of engineering that make use of complex networks of components, systems and materials. To ensure these machines can safely carry people and property across the globe, their hardware systems must be carefully designed, evaluated and certified before becoming a “live” part of the system of systems that is an airplane. That’s where DO-254 comes in to play.   DO-254 is an objective-driven and process-oriented safety standard used to evaluate the simple, advanced and complex electronics in aircraft. We’ve covered the full range of processes and procedures that make up DO-254 guidelines in other articles, so, in this piece we address how and why the standard is Continue Reading > > >

Reverse Engineering in DO-254

In either Top Down or Reverse Engineering, the design traceability and elemental analysis (from DO-254 Appendix B) ultimately provide the evidence of completion for this task. Requirements Decomposition Prerequisites System Level Functional Requirements complete and baselined System Design Constraints Requirements Decomposition Objectives Complete decomposition of System Level Requirements into Hardware Requirements. Decomposition implies that the newly developed requirements are traceable to the System Level; the requirements traceability will be the verification that this task is complete. Capture of design specific Derived Requirements as needed to fully define the functions and performance. Derived Requirements are defined as requirements that will not Continue Reading > > >