SOURCES SOUGHT
A -- SUBSONIC ROTARY WING TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT
- Notice Date
- 11/1/2005
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541330
— Engineering Services
- Contracting Office
- NASA/Ames Research Center, JA:M/S 241-1, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000
- ZIP Code
- 94035-1000
- Solicitation Number
- NNA06133950R-MJH
- Response Due
- 11/15/2005
- Archive Date
- 11/1/2006
- Description
- NASA/ARC is hereby soliciting information about potential sources for research and development work in subsonic rotary wing technology development. It is anticipated that NASA-ARC shall issue a task order contract whereby individual task orders will be issued during the performance period. Task order topics will be drawn from a wide spectrum of topics contained within the scope of the statement of work. Task order work shall include technology assessments, analysis, design, fabrication, and testing requirements (model-scale, full-scale, and flight) with rotorcraft, including but not limited to aerodynamics, structures, computational fluid dynamics, acoustics, comprehensive analysis, cockpit design and control systems, handling qualities, human factors, prognostics and health management assessments, and systems and economics analysis. The following topical areas are listed as examples of task order subjects: Assessment of Advanced Rotorcraft Technologies The successful contractor shall conduct studies to analyze advanced/emerging/leap frog technologies and the potential payoff to the national airspace system passenger, rotorcraft operator, and rotorcraft manufacturer. Payoffs include increase passenger-capable VTOL aircraft, benefits to purchase cost, reliability, operating costs, and passenger ticket costs. The contractor shall identify and review concepts of technology insertion to existing fleets, new rotorcraft variants, or entirely new vertical lift aircraft. The contractor shall analyze designs, develop technology plans, identify critical technologies and areas of technical risk, and develop alternative risk mitigation plans. Assessment of Rotorcraft Requirements in the Next Generation Air Traffic Management System The contractor shall examine current helicopter operations and the deficiencies or problem areas of current IFR and proposed simultaneous non-interfering operations with respect to rotorcraft; identify requirements necessary to integrate rotorcraft into future generation ATM systems; formulate research and technology plans to address these needs. Efforts can include describing major rotorcraft missions, applications, and operating environments; providing market size, passengers carried statistics; conduct economic impacts of the rotorcraft industry on the national and international economies. Prognostics and Health Management Assessments The contractor shall conduct studies and analyses on prognostics and intelligent vehicle health management (IVHM) technologies. The contractor shall identify promising new technologies that have the potential to significantly reduce rotorcraft operations and support costs. The contractor personnel may work with NASA, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy and FAA liaisons to understand the leveraging technologies under development by the U.S. Government. Research Flight Testing The contractor shall provide an airworthy helicopter, tiltrotor, and/or advanced vertical lift vehicle (manned or unmanned) including the ground and flight crew members required to conduct safe flight operations in accordance with a Government provided or approved test plan. The aircraft will be operated in hover, climb, transition, cruise, maneuver, and descent. The aircraft may be required to fly in formation flight with another Government-provided aircraft. The offeror will incorporate GFE instrumentation into the offeror's aircraft as required and specified. Data will be acquired using the offeror's data acquisition, reduction and storage system and provided in reduced format to the Government together will all pertinent documentation of sensor calibration and signal processing. Wind Tunnel Test Stands The contractor shall provide a fully capable small/large/full-scale wind tunnel test stand (including all cabling and control consoles) for model helicopter/tilt rotor testing in Government and private industry test facilities. The hardware design and analyses shall demonstrate conformance to all pertinent Government requirements. Design reviews (CDR, PDR, CDR) and reports will be prepared, reviewed by Government personnel, modified and approved. The contractor will prepare hardware and documentation necessary for full operation of such stands with Government, the contractor, or third party rotor systems installed. Full design, stress, quality assurance, FMEA, instrumentation, health monitoring, operation, and maintenance TOcumentation will be provided. The contractor can be required to provided training and/or support personnel on site in the use and operation of the test stand at Government, the contractor, or third party test sites. Hardware Gear Testing Components The contractor shall prepare layout and design of a new testing system to enable evaluation of loss-of-lubrication performance of high speed helical gears. Data obtained from such tests will be used to validate analytical models provided by the Government or developed by the offeror for the design, fabrication and evaluation of loss-of-lube tolerant rotorcraft drive systems. Multiple or variable speed transmission technologies will be investigated as to their benefits and design trade-offs including speed regulation, weight, maintenance and inspection requirements. Advanced Rotor Technology/Configuration Assessments The contractor shall analyze, fabricate and evaluate advanced rotor hub and on-blade control systems for performance improvements, vibration reduction, noise alleviation, carefree maneuvering, and stability and flight dynamics improvements. Analyses may include comprehensive analysis models, fundamental physics codes, simulation experiments, and piloted real-time simulations. The hardware to be fabricated may use new emerging materials and technologies, including adaptive and morphing structures. Rotor hardware will be model/large/full-scale and flight qualified hardware. All necessary documentation will be reviewed and concurred with by Government personnel. All hardware to interface with test stands and flight test vehicles will be designed, manufactured, and documented as well. Reports will be prepared to document all the findings from the assessment, including identification of future work necessary to mitigate identified technical and economic productivity risks. Drive System Sensitivity Studies for Rotorcraft The contractor shall perform sensitivity studies to determine the effect of selected drive system-related parameters on helicopter/tilt rotor/advanced rotorcraft direct operating cost (DOC) and performance. The contractor shall furnish or be provided full mission definition and baseline vehicle descriptions, and shall identify all assumptions required to conduct such studies. The contractor shall select rotorcraft synthesis codes to evaluate the effect on DOC and performance on parameters such as mean time between removal, acquisition costs, maintenance costs, and weight. The contractor will also provide information on the effect of this parameters on reducing aviation accident rates. Avionics Processor Equipment and GPS Upgrades The contractor shall provide acquisition and utilization of updated avionics equipment for Government research aircraft, such as the UH-60A RASCAL aircraft. The contractor shall provide flight director equipment including ruggedized avionics processor equipment, software, licenses, graphics displays and process flight director code to be used in Government-conducted flight research test programs. Health Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) Technology Assessments and Demonstrations The contractor shall provide personnel, facilities, equipment, and material as necessary to perform investigations of onboard sensors/equipment on a contractor provided rotorcraft to improve HUMS capabilities, accuracy, and utilization. The contractor shall demonstrate application of usage monitoring techniques to rotorcraft missions using a HUMS equipped aircraft. Guidelines for certification/qualification and integration of HUMS into an operator's maintenance program will be developed. Rational procedures for obtaining maintenance credits shall be proposed. The economic impact and cost benefits of HUMS technologies will be conducted including but not limited to retirement index number, airspeed/load factor/gross weight histograms, exceedance monitoring, and torque-cycle counting. Evaluation of using damage tolerance analysis in conjunction with Flight Condition Recognition will be compared to conventional damage determination by safe-life methodology. Engineering Analyses of Advanced Concepts Application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), aeroacoustics, comprehensive analysis, and other advanced computational methods for the computation and prediction of rotor aerodynamic loads and acoustics, airfoil design, vibration prediction and alleviation, and computation of interactional aerodyanmic effects between various vehicle components (rotor, fuselage, tail, wings, other rotors). Design and testing of model- and full-scale rotor systems and vehicle concepts involving aerodynamics, acoustics, structures, and dynamics; and also involving analysis, design, fabrication, instrumentation, data acquisition, data reduction, correlation, and reporting may be required. Subject Material Expert Review The contractor shall provide appropriate nationally recognized experts in any number of rotary wing technology areas as required to meet Government needs for reviewing, critiquing, and providing expert advice in Government-funded, directed, or conducted research. Insure proper prioritization and focus of new emerging technical disciplines and directions in new programs and accurately review accomplishments and progress in single, specific programmatic situations or on a regularly schedule program basis. Advanced Cockpit Crew Station Research Development and operation of real-time mathematical models or rotorcraft for use in fixed and moving base simulations; design and development of control systems and crew station displays and related control laws and evaluation in both fixed and moving base simulations that may include air traffic operations; and investigation of human interface requirements for advanced cockpit designs, including displays and flight control devices, for optimum pilot workload. No solicitation exists; therefore, do not request a copy of the solicitation. If a solicitation is released it will be synopsized in FedBizOpps and on the NASA Acquisition Internet Service. It is the potential offeror?s responsibility to monitor these sites for the release of any solicitation or synopsis. Interested offerors/vendors having the required specialized capabilities to meet the above requirement should submit a capability statement of not more than ten (10) pages or less indicating the ability to perform all aspects of the effort described herein. Responses must include the following: name and address of firm, size of business; average annual revenue for past 3 years and number of employees; ownership; whether they are large, small, small disadvantaged, 8(a), HUBZone, and/or woman-owned; number of years in business; affiliate information: parent company, joint venture partners, potential teaming partners, prime contractor (if potential sub) or subcontractors (if potential prime); list of customers covering the past five years (highlight relevant work performed, contract numbers, contract type, dollar value of each procurement; and point of contact - address and phone number). Technical questions should be directed to: Dr. William Warmbrodt. Procurement related questions should be directed to: Michael J. Hutnik III. Questions shall be submitted in writing, e-mail questions shall be accepted. All questions shall be answered in writing by the Government and shall be posted on this site. Please advise if the requirement is considered to be a commercial or commercial-type product. A commercial item is defined in FAR 2.101. This synopsis is for information and planning purposes and is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government nor will the Government pay for information solicited. Respondents will not be notified of the results of the evaluation. Respondents deemed fully qualified will be considered in any resultant solicitation for the requirement. The Government reserves the right to consider a small business or 8(a) set-aside based on responses hereto. All responses shall be submitted to Michael J. Hutnik III no later than 15 November 2005. Please reference NNA06133950R-MJH in any response. Any referenced notes may be viewed at the following URLs linked below.
- Web Link
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- Record
- SN00924669-W 20051103/051101212304 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
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