A--SUBSONIC ROTARY WING TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT

NASA/ARC plans to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) for Subsonic Rotary Wing Technology Development. The RFP shall be issued on a full and open competiton basis. The period of performance shall be five (5) years from the date of issuance of the contract(s). The anticipated the total contract value shall be $10,000,000. It is anticipated that NASA shall issue multiple contracts (up to five (5) contracts shall be issued). The contract(s) shall be issued as task order contracts. All task orders for new work shall be competed amongst the contract awardees. Some task orders may be issued on a sole source basis providing that adequate justification for issuance of a sole source task order exists. The contract Statement of Work shall contain a broad spectrum of research topics for Subsonic Rotary Wing Technology. Task order Statements of Work shall be developed from within the scope of the contract Statement of Work. Task Orders shall be developed from a wide spectrum of 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 areas are listed as examples: Assessment of Advanced Rotorcraft Technologies The offeror 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. Offeror shall identify and review concepts of technology insertion to existing fleets, new rotorcraft variants, or entirely new vertical lift aircraft. Offeror 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 offeror 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 offeror shall conduct studies and analyses on prognostics and intelligent vehicle health management (IVHM) technologies. The offeror shall identify promising new technologies that have the potential to significantly reduce rotorcraft operations and support costs. Offeror 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 offeror 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 offeror 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 (Conceptual, Preliminary, and Detailed Design Reviews) and reports will be prepared, reviewed by Government personnel, modified and approved. The offeror will prepare hardware and documentation necessary for full operation of such stands with Government, the offeror, or third party rotor systems installed. Full design, stress, quality assurance, FMEA, instrumentation, health monitoring, operation, and maintenance documentation will be provided. The offeror can be required to provided training and/or support personnel on site in the use and operation of the test stand at Government, offeror, or third party test sites. Hardware Gear Testing Components The offeror 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 offeror 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 offeror 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 offeror 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 offeror will also provide information on the effect of this parameters on reducing aviation accident rates. Avionics Processor Equipment and GPS Upgrades The offeror shall provide acquisition and utilization of updated avionics equipment for Government research aircraft, such as the UH-60A RASCAL aircraft. The offeror 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 an offeror provided rotorcraft to improve HUMS capabilities, accuracy, and utilization. The offeror 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 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. Provide qualified experts for advisory panels (or red teams). 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. The Government does not intend to acquire a commercial item using FAR Part 12. See Note 26. The NAICS Code and Size Standard are 541330 and $20,000,000 annual revenue, respectively. All responsible sources may submit an offer which shall be considered by the agency. Please note, offerors submitting a proposal must be capable of performing all aspects of the statement of work either through their own resources or through partnership/consortium/subcontracting agreements. NASA shall also accept company information provided for the purpose of seeking subcontracting opportunities. The anticipated release date of the RFP is on or about 4 January 2006 with an anticipated offer due date of on or about 14 February 2006. An ombudsman has been appointed -- See NASA Specific Note "B". The solicitation and any documents related to this procurement will be available over the Internet. These documents will reside on a World Wide Web (WWW) server, which may be accessed using a WWW browser application. The Internet site, or URL, for the NASA/ARC Business Opportunities home page is http://nais.msfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/eps/bizops.cgi?gr=D&pin=21 Prospective offerors shall notify this office of their intent to submit an offer. It is the offeror's responsibility to monitor the Internet site for the release of the solicitation and amendments (if any). Potential offerors will be responsible for downloading their own copy of the solicitation and amendments (if any). Any referenced notes may be viewed at the following URLs linked below. All contractual technical questions must be submitted in writing (e-mail or fax). Telephone questions will not be accepted.