Runway overruns (ROs) are the result of an aircraft rolling beyond the end of a runway, which is one of the accident’s types that most frequently occurs on aviation. The risk of an RO arises from the synergistic effect among its precursors, such as unstable approaches, long touchdowns and inadequate use of deceleration devices. To analyse this complex socio-technical system, the current work proposes a customised functional resonance analysis method, called FRAM-FDM, as traditional techniques of risk and safety assessment do not identify the interactions and couplings between the various functional aspects of the system itself, especially regarding human and organisational components. Basically, FRAM-FDM is the coupling of a traditional FRAM with flight data monitoring (FDM) techniques, used here to quantify the variabilities of the flight crew performance while executing the required activity (i.e. the landing). In this proposal, these variabilities (i.e. the FRAM functions aspects) are aggregated by the addend of a logistic regression, resulting in a model to evaluate the flare operations and the brake application profile effect on the remaining distance to the end of the runway, used as a reference to classify the landing as acceptable or not. The present application of the FRAM-FDM assesses the operational risk of a sample fleet in overrunning the runway during landing, highlighting the brake pedal application profile as the most relevant contributor. The model improves the knowledge about the system behaviour, being useful to direct flight crew training.

The use of the required navigation performance (RNP) procedure has been increasing for aircraft navigation, since it allows for better optimisation of the airspace, which is increasingly congested. The present work aims to investigate the application of the functional resonance analysis method (FRAM), combined with the quantitative analysis provided by the Bayesian belief network (BBN), to demonstrate the existing variability in functions that are part of the complex navigation system based on the RNP procedure, specifically when the aircraft approaches the airport (approach phase). As a result, it is possible to analyse the variability that occurs in the studied system and the BBN complemented the study by allowing a quantitative interpretation of the functions considered most important for the execution of an RNP approach procedure.

Retention loss is a significant issue for an application of ferroelectric thin films to high-density non-volatile memory devices. We investigated the polarization retention characteristics of ferroelectric Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) thin films which were fabricated on Pt/IrO2/Ir substrates by different deposition methods. In thermally-accelerated retention failure tests, Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) films which were prepared by a chmeical solution deposition (CSD) method showed rapid decay of retained polarization charges as the films became thinner down to 1000 Å, while the films which were grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) showed relatively large nonvolatile charges at the same thickness. We concluded that in the CSD-grown films, the relatively large interfacial passive layer compared with the MOCVD-grown films had an unfavorable effect on retention behavior. We observed the existence of such interfacial layers by extrapolation of the total capacitance with thickness of the films and the capacitance of this layer was larger in MOCVD-grown films. It means that the possibility of the accumulation of space charges at the interface was reduced, so that less imprint and less retention loss could be observed in the MOCVD-grown films.