Combination of aviation and electronics

Avionics system or Avionics sub-system dependent on

electronics
Avionics industry- a major multi-billion dollar industry
world wide
Avionics equipment on a modern military or civil
aircraft\ account for around
 30% of the total cost of the aircraft
 40% in the case of a maritime patrol/anti-submarine aircraft (or
helicopter)
 Over 75% of the total cost in the case of an airborne early warning
aircraft such as an AWACS
 To enable the flight crew to carry out the aircraft
mission safely and efficiently.
 Mission is carrying passengers to their destination
(Civil Airliner).
 Intercepting a hostile aircraft, attacking a ground target,
reconnaissance or maritime patrol (Military Aircraft).
 To meet the mission requirements with the minimum
flight crew (namely the first pilot and the second pilot)
 Economic benefits like
 Saving of crew salaries
 Expenses and training costs
 Reduction in weigh-more passengers or longer range
on less fuel
 A single seat fighter or strike (attack) aircraft is lighter
 Costs less than an equivalent two seat version
 Elimination of the second crew member
(navigator/observer/crew member)
 Reduction in training costs
 Increased safety
 Air traffic control requirements
 All weather operation
 Reduction in fuel consumption
 Improved aircraft performance and control and handling and
reduction in maintenance costs
 In the military case, the avionics systems are also being
driven by a continuing increase in the threats posed by the
defensive and offensive capabilities of potential aggressors.
 Starting point for designing a digital Avionics system is a clear
understanding of the mission requirements and the
requirement levied by the host aircraft
 Top-level Requirement for Military
◦ The customer prepares the statement of need and top-level
description of possible missions
◦ Describes the gross characteristic of a hypothetical aircraft
that could fly the mission
◦ Customer may also describe the mission environment and
define strategic and tactical philosophies and principles and
rules of engagement.
 Design is, in general,
a team effort
a large system integration activity
done in three stages
iterative
creative, knowledge based.
 The three stages are:
Conceptual design
Preliminary design
Detailed design
 What will it do?
 How will it do it?
 What is the general arrangement of parts?
 The end result of conceptual design is an artist’s or
engineer’s conception of the vehicle/product.
 Example: Clay model of an automobile.
 How big will it be?
 How much will it weigh?
 What engines will it use?
 How much fuel or propellent will it use?
 How much will it cost?
 This is what you will do in this course.
 How many parts will it have?
 What shape will they be?
 What materials?
 How will it be made?
 How will the parts be joined?
 How will technology advancements (e.g.
lightweight material, advanced airfoils, improved
engines, etc.) impact the design?
 The designer needs to satisfy
◦ Customer who will buy and operate the vehicle (e.g. Delta,
TWA)
◦ Government Regulators (U.S. , Military, European,
Japanese…)
 Performance:
 Payload weight and volume
 how far and how fast it is to be carried
 how long and at what altitude
 passenger comfort
 flight instruments, ground and flight handling qualities
 Cost
 Price of system and spares, useful life, maintenance hours per
flight hour
 Firm order of units, options, Delivery schedule, payment
schedule
 Civil
FAA Civil Aviation Regulations define such things as
required strength, acoustics, effluents, reliability, take-off
and landing performance, emergency egress time.
 Military
May play a dual role as customer and regulator
MIL SPECS (Military specifications)
May set minimum standards for Mission turn-around time,
strength, stability, speed-altitude-maneuver capability,
detectability, vulnerability
 Aircraft/Spacecraft Design often involves integrating
parts, large and small, made by other vendors, into an
airframe or spaceframe (also called “the bus.”)
 Parts include
 engines, landing gear, shock absorbers, wheels, brakes, tires
 avionics (radios, antennae, flight control computers)
 cockpit instruments, actuators that move control surfaces, retract
landing gears, etc...
 Lot of Analyses
 Ground testing and simulation (e.g. wind tunnel tests of
model aircraft, flight simulation, drop tests, full scale
mock-up, fatigue tests)
 Flight tests
 The aircraft manufacturer makes a very careful analysis of the
potential customer’s route structure, image , and operating
philosophies to determine the customer’s need and postulates a
future operating environment.
 The manufacturer then designs an aircraft that provides an
optimum, balance response to the integrated set of needs
 Safety is always the highest priority need and economical
operation is a close second.
 Five operational States for the flight control system:

Operational State I: Normal Operation

Operational State II: Restricted Operation
Operational State I: Minimum safe Operation
Operational State I: Controllable to an immediate
emergency landing
Operational State I: Controllable to an evaluable flight
condition
 Capability
 Reliability
 Maintainability
 Certificability
 Survivability(military)
 Availability
 Susceptibility
 vulnerability
 Life cycle cost(military) or cost of ownership(civil)
 Technical risk
 Weight & power
 Capability:
How capable is avionics system?
can they do the job and even more?
Designer to maximize the capability of the system within the
constraints that are imposed.

 Reliability:
Designer strives to make systems as reliable as possible.
High reliability less maintenance costs.
If less reliable customer will not buy it and in terms of civil
airlines the certificating agencies will not certify it.
 Maintainability:
Closely related to reliability
System must need preventive or corrective maintenance.
System can be maintained through built in testing, automated
troubleshooting and easy access to hardware.

 Availability:
Combination of reliability and maintainability
Trade of between reliability and maintainability to optimize
availability.
Availability translates into sorties for military aircraft and into
revenue flights for civil aircrafts.
 Certificability:
Major area of concern for avionics in civil airlines.
Certification conducted by the regulatory agencies based on
detailed, expert examination of all facets of aircraft design and
operation.
The avionics architecture should be straight forward and easily
understandable.
There should be no sneak circuits and no noobvious modes of
operation.
Avionics certification focus on three analyses: preliminary
hazard, fault tree, and FMEA.
 Survivability:
 It is a function of susceptibility and vulnerability.
 Susceptibility: measure of probability that an aircraft will
be hit by a given threat.
 Vulnerability: measure of the probability that damage will
occur if there is a hit by the threat

 Life cycle cost(LCC)or Cost of ownership:

 It deals with economic measures need for evaluating
avionics architecture.
 It includes costs of varied items as spares acquisition,
transportation, storage and training (crew and Maintenance
personnel's),hardware development and test, depreciation
and interest.
 Risk:
Amount of failures and drawbacks in the design and
implementation.
Over come by using the latest technology and fail proof
technique to overcome both developmental and long term
technological risks.
 Weight and power:
Minimize the weight and power requirements are two
fundamental concepts of avionics design.
So the design must be light weight and power consuming
which is possible through the data bus and latest advancement
of electronics devices.
 SONAR
 RADAR
 Military communications
 Electro optics (FLIR or PIDS)
 ECM OR ECCM
 ESM/DAS
 Tactical missile guidance
 The term “glass cockpit” generally refers to an LCD
display that replaces the conventional “six-pack” of
flight instruments.
 It’s a term given to any aircraft in which the primary
instruments are located within a single primary flight
display (PFD) or Multi-Function Display (MFD) that
looks like a computer screen – a large, flat, glass-panel
display.
 PFDs and MFDs have the
capability to display all of
the traditional instruments
along with lots of additional
data such as engine data,
checklists, weather and
traffic displays.
 The typical six-pack on an older aircraft includes six
primary instruments (hence the name ‘six-pack’),
 Airspeed indicator, (1knots=1nm/hr=
1.151mil/hr=1.852 km/hr =0.514m/s)
 Attitude Indicator,
 Altimeter,
 Vertical Speed Indicator,
 Turn Coordinator
 Directional Gyro (DG)
 Air speed Indicator Attitude Indicator Altimeter Indicator

Vertical speed Indicator Gyro Direction Indicator Turn Indicator

 In a glass cockpit, like the
popular Garmin G1000,
these instruments no longer
exist, and the data is
displayed digitally.
 The General Aviation Manufacturers Association
(GAMA) starts to define a glass cockpit by defining
what they call an Integrated Flight Deck.
 Integration may also include display and control of
airborne surveillance, airplane systems and engine
systems.”
 GAMA’s definition of an integrated flight deck states:
“…at a minimum, an integrated cockpit/flight deck
must include electronic display and control of all
primary airplane airspeed, altitude and attitude
instruments, and all essential navigation and
communication functions.
 The FAA doesn’t define the term glass cockpit, but the
organization does define a “technically advanced aircraft” or
TAA, as having an IFR-certified GPS or an MFD with
weather, traffic or terrain information, and an autopilot.
 The Garmin G1000 equipped aircraft falls into a class of
aircraft configurations referred by the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) as Technically Advanced Aircraft or
TAA.
 Today’s aircraft have multiple interdependent
electronic displays that work together to give the pilot
all of the necessary data on one screen.
 These glass cockpits are meant to be more efficient for
pilots,
 But can cause some problems if the pilot is unfamiliar
with the on-board system.
 Problems can arise for pilots who fail to become
completely familiar with the glass cockpit technology
and spend too much heads-down time inside of the
cockpit, figuring out the computer’s functions.
 And too much heads-down time is even a problem for
pilots experienced with the technology, as they can
easily become overly dependent on it or fixate on its
functions instead of looking out the window.
 The CRT is a display screen which produces images in the
form of the video signal.
 It is a type of vacuum tube which displays images when the
electron beam through electron guns are strikes on the
phosphorescent surface.
 In other Words, the CRT generates the beams, accelerates it at
high velocity and deflect it for creating the images on the
phosphorous screen so that the beam becomes visible.
CRT DISPLAY
 The working of CRT depends on the movement of
electrons beams.
 The electron guns generate sharply focused electrons
which are accelerated at high voltage.
 This high-velocity electron beam when strikes on the
fluorescent screen creates luminous spot.
 After exiting from the electron gun, the beam passes
through the pairs of electrostatic deflection plate.
 These plates deflected the beams when the voltage applied
across it.
 The one pair of plate moves the beam upward and the second
pair of plate moves the beam from one side to another.
 The horizontal and vertical movement of the electron are
independent of each other, and hence the electron beam
positioned anywhere on the screen.
 The working parts of a CRT are enclosed in a vacuum glass
envelope so that the emitted electron can easily move freely
from one end of the tube to the other.
 The Electrons Gun Assembly, Deflection Plate
Assembly, Fluorescent Screen, Glass Envelope, Base
are the important parts of the CRT.
 The electron gun emits the electron beam, and through
deflecting plates, it is strikes on the phosphorous
screen.
 The electron gun is the source of the electron beams. The
electron gun has a heater, cathode, grid, pre-accelerating
anode, focusing anode and accelerating anode.
 The electrons are emitted from the highly emitted cathode.
 The cathode is cylindrical in shape, and at the end of it, the
layer of strontium and barium oxide is deposited which emit
the high emission of electrons at the end of the tube.
 The electron passes through the electron in the small grid.
 This control grid is made up of nickel material with a centrally
located hole which is coaxial with the CRT axis.
 The electron which is emitted from the electron gun and
passes through the control grid have high positive potential
 which is applied across the pre-accelerating and accelerating
anodes.
 The beam is focused by focusing anode
 The pre-accelerating and accelerating anode are connected to
the positive high voltage of about 1500V and the focusing
anode are connected to the lower voltage of about 500V.
 There are two methods of focusing the electron beam. They
are
 Electrostatic Focusing Beam.
 Electromagnetic Focusing.
 The deflection plate produces the uniform electrostatic field
only in the one direction.
 The electron beam entering into the deflection plates will
accelerate only in the one direction.
 Hence electrons will not move in the other directions.
 The front of the CRT is called the face plate.
 The face plate of the CRT is made up of entirely fibre optics
which has special characteristics.
 The internal surface of the faceplate is coated with the
phosphor.
 The phosphorous converts the electrical energy into light
energy.
 The energy level of the phosphorous crystal raises
when the electron beams strike on it.
 This phenomenon is called cathode luminescence.
 The light which is emitted through phosphorous
excitation is called fluorescence.
 When the electron beam stop, the phosphorous
crystal regain their original position and release a
quantum of light energy which is called
phosphorescence or persistence.
 It is a combination of two states of matter, the solid and the
liquid.
 LCD uses a liquid crystal to produce a visible image.
 Liquid crystal displays are super-thin technology display
screens that are generally used in laptop computer screens,
TVs, cell phones, and portable video games.
 LCD’s technologies allow displays to be much thinner when
compared to a cathode ray tube (CRT) technology.
 The basic structure of the
LCD should be controlled
by changing the applied
current.
 We must use polarized light.
 The liquid crystal should
able be to control both of
the operations to transmit or
can also able to change the
polarized light.
 The basic structure of the
LCD should be controlled
by changing the applied
current.
 We must use polarized light.
 The liquid crystal should
able be to control both of
the operations to transmit or
can also able to change the
polarized light.
 As mentioned above that we need to take two polarized
glass pieces filter in the making of the liquid crystal.
 The glass which does not have a polarized film on the
surface of it must be rubbed with a special polymer that
will create microscopic grooves on the surface of the
polarized glass filter.
 The grooves must be in the same direction as the
polarized film
 Now we have to add a coating of pneumatic liquid
phase crystal on one of the polarizing filters of the
polarized glass.
 The microscopic channel causes the first layer
molecule to align with filter orientation.
 When the right angle appears at the first layer piece, we
should add a second piece of glass with the polarized
film.
 The first filter will be naturally polarized as the light
strikes it at the starting stage.
 Thus the light travels through each layer and guided to the
next with the help of a molecule.
 The molecule tends to change its plane of vibration of the light
to match its angle.
 When the light reaches the far end of the liquid crystal
substance, it vibrates at the same angle as that of the final
layer of the molecule vibrates.
 The light is allowed to enter into the device only if the second
layer of the polarized glass matches with the final layer of the
molecule.
 Twisted Nematic Display
 In-Plane Switching Display
 Vertical Alignment Panel
 Advanced Fringe Field Switching (AFFS)
 Passive and Active Matrix Displays
 The Passive-matrix type LCDs works with a simple grid so
that charge can be supplied to a specific pixel on the LCD.
 The grid can be designed with a quiet process and it starts
through two substrates which are known as glass layers.
 One glass layer gives columns whereas the other one gives
rows that are designed by using a clear conductive material
like indium-tin-oxide.
 Active Matrix LCD
◦ Each pixel is activated directly
 Turn or off individually

◦ Pixel have four transistors

 One each for red,green,blue

 One for opaqueness

◦ Animation is crisp and clean

◦ Quick pixel refresh rate
◦ Wider view angle.
 LCD’s consumes less amount of power compared to
CRT and LED
 LCD’s are consist of some microwatts for display in
comparison to some mill watts for LED’s
 LCDs are of low cost
 Provides excellent contrast
 LCD’s are thinner and lighter when compared to
cathode-ray tube and LED
 Require additional light sources
 Range of temperature is limited for operation
 Low reliability
 Speed is very low
 LCD’s need an AC drive
 The applications of liquid crystal display include the
following.
 Liquid crystal technology has major applications in the
field of science and engineering as well on electronic
devices.
 Liquid crystal thermometer
 Optical imaging
 The liquid crystal display technology is also applicable
in the visualization of the radio frequency waves in the
waveguide
 Used in the medical applications