Work 55 Let’s Get To

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NEW PRODUCTS AEA Members Show Off Their Latest Advances C E L E B R A T I N G 5 0 Y E A R S O F P U B L I S H I N G J U N E 2 0 1 3 a v i o n i c s n e w s . n e t E X C E L L E N C E . 5 YEARS A Monthly Publication of the 1963-2013 LET’S GET TO WORK  AEA Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient: Dan Derby  AEA Associate Member of the Year: Sandia Aerospace  AEA Member of the Year: Kent McIntyre of Bevan-Rabell Inc.  2013 AEA International Convention & Trade Show Highlight Edition  industry Electrical-System Manager Aircraft Electrical Systems Can Be More Automated – And More Modern S T O R Y B Y D A V E H I G D O N With so many options available for updating panels relying on old-style resistance-based circuit breakers or, worse, fuses, it may seem like depending on a musket to defend a missile base. Modern power-management systems offering a new take and integrating the power management – while simplifying such labor-intensive chores as re-wiring or installing standby electricals – remain a perk enjoyed by the experimental market. 20 avionics news • june 2013 C an you name three places where technicians see fewer and fewer air-driven components? Answer: avionics shops, maintenance shops and aircraft assembly lines. Next, can you name three places where technicians see evermore aircraft with totally electric panels? Answer: avionics shops, maintenance shops and factory assembly lines. In an expanding glass-cockpit age, air-powered instrument systems are quickly becoming as anachronistic as the Venturis that powered suction systems before the age of the air-moving pump. The same can be said for those air-moving pumps which, while lacking the Venturi’s simplicity, at least overcame its shortcomings. In a glass-cockpit age powered by electrical current, fuses as protectors against current overload approach equal anachronism with Venturis for air power. In fact, in the era of glass and elec- tronic cockpit systems, power management remains rooted largely in analog-era technology – circuit breakers, with some advantages and economy over fuses. Well, at least for most Part 23 certificated aircraft. Waiting in the wings, so to speak, is the solid-state circuit-management system, complete with electronic circuit breakers and a host of protections and features unmatched by analog-age circuit protectors. Modern power-management hardware is already becoming established in Part 25 business-turbine and commercial aircraft, with ever more employing digital circuitry protections and controls for their sophisticated flight-deck and back-cabin electronics systems. Sources for the technology are expanding in both certificated and experimental aviation. Astronics Corp., for example, supplies a variety of solid-state circuit switching, intelligent power management and distributed architecture products used in businessturbine and commercial aircraft. The world of certificated aircraft is seeing the migration start. In one example, Airbus’ upcoming A350 employs modern electrical-power management, as does very light jet maker Eclipse Aerospace in the company’s Eclipse 550. “Digital electrical power distribution,” as Eclipse labels its approach, is representative of the company’s total-integration philosophy for the Eclipse. The VLJ employs electronic circuit breaker technology and smart power distribution with electrical power automatically controlled and distributed by the aircraft’s Avio Processing Center – the central brain of the jet’s avionics, power and aircraft-systems management package. The glass cockpit is the perfect environment for emerging approach to electricalpower management. Experimental aircraft operators already enjoy alternatives to the busses- and-breakers system of wiring control. Ditto for the light-sport aircraft market, in which World Aircraft Company, a manufacturer of light-sport aircraft, is one of the latest to embrace ECBs and electronicpower-management system for its Spirit, Vision, Freedom and Surveyor models. Many other LSA makers already embrace the approach, while others are coming around. Those inroads would seem to set the stage for the day when electronic-power management nudges circuit breakers into the company of Venturis and pump-based Waiting in the wings, so to speak, is the solid-state circuit-management system, complete with electronic circuit breakers and a host of protections and features unmatched by analog-age circuit protectors. air-powered instruments and electrical fuses in the evolution of power-management protection and control for the majority of general aviation. Absent approved products, however, circuit breakers still dominate light general aviation aircraft, even as those aircraft’s panels move ever deeper into the digital age. The Current State of Electrical-Power Management: Busses, Breakers and Lots of Wire As an avionics technician once explained to me, the more complex the panel installation, the more devices and the more breakers the ship needs. Add standby or emergency power generation – or a battery – and complexity can increase as the technician wires the plane for the secondary power source while simultaneously isolating the two sources and providing standby power to a select list of gear… a PFD and one nav/comm or GPS, for example, plus a transponder or other ADS-B Out transmitter. More wires, more breakers, more complexity – and more weight, more failure points and more prospective maintenance needs. All those wires and breakers – or thermal-mechanical electric-limiting devices – suffer with age and use, eventually becoming maintenance items of their own. While the emergence of digital electronics has helped avionics makers pack more into less space, electrical-power distribution and protection largely remains unchanged in most aircraft. But the advances in electronics, electronic switching and digital logic open the way to electrical systems simpler to create, and more reliable and flexible in their ability to handle functions beyond circuit protection and switching. The specialized field effect transistor serves as a switching device and can be adapted to a current-limiting device. The most common type of FET in switching circuits is the “metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor,” or MOSFET. In a nutshell, this advance allows for the fundamental functions we count on from circuit breakers plus significantly more – but without breakers or most of their functional limitations. Here is how Michael Ballas and Fred Potter, both of Astronics Corp., explained it in their SAE International technical paper, available online at http://papers.sae. org/2012-01-2183/, titled “Advanced AirContinued on following page avionics news • june 2013 21 THE ELECTRICAL-SYSTEM MANAGER Continued from page 21 craft Electrical Power Management-Maximizing Utility Function Integration with Solid State Power Control.” “The development of the microprocessor controlled power MOSFET switch, as a circuit protection device for aircraft electrical power systems, has led to significant improvements in packaging, performance and thermal efficiencies over traditional thermal/mechanical systems. The electronic circuit breaker inherently provides multiple functions (protect, sense, diagnose and control). Employing the ECB as a ‘live’ switching element in the system for active control, provides for significant integration of functions, previously requiring separate LRUs (line replaceable units), additional wiring and more power to operate. This paper proposes an optimized electrical power distribution via intelligent control of electronic circuit breakers to provide maximum integration of existing utility management functions (i.e. window heat, de-icing, thrust reversers, etc.), reduction in aircraft wiring, reduced system weight and complexity.” The paper proposes what the engineers at Vertical Power are already doing for the experimental market, while Airbus and Eclipse Aerospace employs their own integrated solution for electronic management of electrical power. The Advance Continues Most technicians working today’s modern piston aircraft largely face the same challenges of the pre-glass-cockpit revolution. The analog approach requires different circuits for different functions, whether current protections are shared individualized or shared among several devices. Now consider the capabilities of Vertical Power’s experimental and light-sport systems and the simpler wiring and safety potential of devices like the VP-X. First up, Vertical Power’s VP-X inte22 avionics news • june 2013 grates with many popular EFIS products enabling the pilot to monitor and control an aircraft’s entire electrical system on the EFIS display. So the pilot can use the EFIS display to monitor electrical-system health, view and control the status of individual circuits, act on circuit faults – all while still employing the EFIS as it was designed – for attitude, navigation and engine information. The VP-X’s ECB still protects the individual circuits like old-fashion thermal circuit breakers. But the ECBs allow configurable capabilities unavailable through breakers. For example, the ECB can detect a burned-out landing light or disable the starter circuit while the engine is running. Vertical Power’s VP-X supports a single bus electrical architecture configured with either a single or dual alternator. The VP-X also can measure the voltage of an auxiliary battery. During maintenance or updates, technicians working with an electronic manager like the VP-X would find each electrical device wired directly to the VP-X – not through a breaker on a bus. For example, you would run a power wire from the VP-X directly to the landing light, another to the EFIS and another to the transponder. Run a bundle of five wires to a trim servo. Run two wires to the flap motor, and so on. Run a small wire from each trim switch, the flap switch and panel switch to the VP-X. Vertical Power’s software and setup menus run on the EFIS to allow configuration of the system. Specify which power pin each device is connected to, the circuit breaker values and which switch should turn each device (or group of devices) on or off. And you can use any type of switch you like to match your panel. The system also allows the pilot or technician doing the programming to program trim servos and autopilot power, flaps and lights – anything the box handles through its array of ECBs. Garmin, Dynon and Grand Rapids Technologies are among the vendors to adapt to Vertical Power’s hardware. For example, Garmin’s GDU 37x cockpit display software for the G3X system was updated to work with the VP-X system. It’s one of the advantages noted in the Astronics Corp. paper on ECBs – the ability to monitor and control of individual functions and circuits managed by an electronic-power management system via electronic flight information system hardware running compatible software. ECBs also can detect short circuits, overcurrent conditions and open-circuit faults. They also reduce the number and weight of wires, old-style breakers and the hardware to support standby systems. Another sign of ECBs’ and “intelligent” power management’s broadening acceptance: Bye Energy Inc. tapped Vertical Power to develop an advanced power management system for Bye’s “Green Flight Project” to create an electric-hybrid propulsion system targeted at a new generation of aircraft. Bye Energy wants Vertical Power’s technology to manage and optimize the aircraft’s electrical-power use while reacting intelligently to electrical-system demands. As in automobiles, an aircraft powered by an EHPS should enjoy significantly lower direct operating costs as well as exhaust emissions, but still deliver comparable range and endurance. A Look at the Differences Any technician who ever tackled updating the analog panel of a pre-glass airliner or business jet knows what a jumbled spaghetti mess they often find, as well as the challenges of updating and maintaining the miles of wires between devices and their power busses and thermal-electrical breakers. Technicians of the future will face fewer such complications when updating modern business jets, such as Bombardier’s Challenger and Global models, Cessna’s new Citation X, Dassault’s innovative Falcon 7X and Gulfstream’s award-winning G650. All, to some degree, employ ECB and electronic switching in both power production Advertisers Index Accord Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 and power management up front and in the main cabin, where in-flight entertainment, airborne-office and satellite-connected systems continue to grow. Within the Eclipse 550’s Avio integrated systems-management architecture, the Avio Processing Center, or APC, electronically controls the distribution of electrical power among four individual power busses; in turn, electrical loads are distributed among each bus to ECBs housed in five electronic circuit breaker units. With the flexibility of the digital-management approach, safety critical systems and components have dual power sources. Control and management of this entire system is through a dedicated cockpit flight displays synoptic page. Eclipse logically grouped ECBs, and their central location dramatically eases identification and control. LSA maker World Aircraft Company tapped Vertical Power for its VP-X electronic circuit breaker system to simplify wiring and manage electrical power and functions, such as lights, trim and flaps for its models. The VP-X integrates tightly with the Dynon SkyView EFIS employed on most of World’s designs. This allows pilots to monitor the status of individual electrical devices while monitoring and managing the entire electrical system directly from the EFIS screen. According to Eric Giles, president of World Aircraft Company, his company selected the VP-X for all its EFIS-equipped models aircraft as a modern alternative to the standard of thermo-mechanical circuit breakers and its complicated wiring. The electronic-management approach allows the design of a cleaner panel and a far simpler wiring job than the conventional approach allows. Using Vertical Power’s VP-X also gives World Aircraft Company the latitude to offer multiple panel configurations without designing a different, complicated wiring harness for each configuration. The company installs the required electronic modules and wiring on a shelf behind the instrument panel onto which the VP-X and the pre-built, complete electrical system can be moved from fabrication in the avionics shop before installation of the completed shelf in the airplane. The result is a simpler layout and efficient electrical system easily accessible from the cabin seats. Plus, with the VP-X as the hub for the power system, the entire shelf can be removed in minutes for modification or repair, according to the company. A Glimpse into the Future? While Vertical Power’s system isn’t approved for use in certificated aircraft, Eclipse’s integrated version is – a Part 23 design returning to prime time. According to Vertical Power staff at this year’s Sun ‘n Fun International Fly-In & Expo in Lakeland, Fla., they would be interested in taking that step if they could find the support from an aircraft original equipment manufacturer or other financial supporter. In the meantime, the existence of certified variations for larger aircraft points to a future when someone will step up with an approved ECB package for Part 23 aircraft. That step forward could help planemakers produce planes with power-management technology as modern as the components they put in the panels – save weight and complexity, gain reliability and maintenance simplicity. The maintenance community would find yet another change that helps simplify the lives of its technicians. And those old breakers wouldn’t necessarily be eliminated completely – but would be limited to major roles, such as master switching… at least for a while. How soon this becomes widely available to the mass of general aviation aircraft is difficult to predict. But the inevitability appears apparent as, once again, experimental aviation on one side and jet aviation on the other set the stage for filling the technological gap in between. q Aero Air. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Aero Standard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Aeroflex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Aero-Mach Labs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Aerospace Optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Aircell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Aircraft Electronics Association. . . . . . . 95 Astronics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Avionics Specialist Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 AVweb. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Becker Avionics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Cal Labs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Cobham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Dallas Avionics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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