National critical technologies report.

  • United States. Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Date:
1995
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: National critical technologies report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    vehicles that are controlled electronically could increase lane capacity by factors of three or four. : In addition to these six major areas, electronic payment services would improve convenience and efficiency, for toll collection, personal vehicle use, interstate tracking, and for public transit users who might rely on smart fare cards. Some of these systems are already fielded around the country. Forecasts suggest that traffic fatalities, accidents and congestion would markedly decrease when ITS becomes operational. In fact, successful deployment of ITS has the potential to vastly improve surface transport in the U.S. while improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution from transportation. Although much of ITS progress thus far has targeted private and commercial motor vehicles, it is expected that rail system and public transportation operations will also benefit. Although the major benefits would promote health, safety, and economic security, important national security benefits would stem from more efficient use of existing highways in times of crisis or war. There seems to be no clear leader in intelligent transportation systems technologies since the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan are all pursuing active programs involving both private and public resources. Spacecraft and aircraft integration Complete integration of an aircraft or spacecraft, as opposed to mere component design, requires broad experience, a complete understanding of all component technologies, and a design infrastructure including methods, tools, and people. The added complexity of making many sub-systems operate simultaneously without interference with each other requires a special set of skills which are different from skills required to design and build an individual component. One emerging tool for enhanced systems integration is multidisciplinary design optimization. It is an emerging computational technique which has high promise for the overall improvement of design quality and resulting aircraft efficiency. It includes several numerical techniques for finding an optimal system solution across numerous functional disciplines such as aerodynamics, structures, and. controls. While this has always been a goal, attacked by such time-honored __ techniques as the carpet plot, it has been virtually impossible to simultaneously optimize any complex system due to the number of variables required. Ni Multidisciplinary Optimization techniques such as “Decomposition” hope to break this logjam and allow complex system optimization of hundreds or thousands of variables. This will find more-optimal solutions resulting in lower aircraft weight and cost. Lower weight and cost will, in turn, improve the competitiveness of U.S. aircraft on world markets, and will result in aircraft which are more friendly to the environment because they will use less fuel and