Communications: electrical – Aircraft alarm or indicating systems – Land-based landing guidance
Patent
1995-01-19
1997-07-01
Swarthout, Brent A.
Communications: electrical
Aircraft alarm or indicating systems
Land-based landing guidance
340642, 315130, B64F 118
Patent
active
056443048
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention concerns an automatic control system of lights in a series circuit illumination system, in particular for lights for airport signalling. It is furthermore possible to utilize the same system for automatic control of road or motorway (motorway crossings or ramps) illumination plants or even for controlling the illumination plant of large industrial areas.
Airport signalling lights or runway lights are not limited to those which illuminate the landing strip to make it well visible to pilots, but also include the taxiway or runway centerline lights which are arranged on the axis of the taxiways, the take-off strip and the routes between the taxiway and the various parking areas. The characteristics, arrangement and functioning of these lights are disciplined by the regulations of the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) which is the international body which controls flight regulations including also those to be respected in the movement of aircraft and vehicles on the ground, in order to guarantee collective safety. The presence of these lights has, in fact, the purpose of giving the pilots and drivers of vehicles circulating in the airport area (such as ambulances, fire engines, vehicles for passenger transport, vehicles for baggage transport, etc) an exact indication of the whereabouts of various airport sectors which can be driven on also in conditions of unfavorable visibility, in particular enabling aircraft pilots to avoid any collisions with the wing tips and to align the aircraft along the axis of the taxiways and the take-off strip.
The use of lights for airport signalling has been proposed in the art as a visual means for disciplining the airport ground traffic in a centralized manner and thus taking it away from the judgement of individual drivers, something which, however, leads to situations of chaos very similar to those encountered in urban motor vehicle traffic. In particular, from the control tower the central lights of the route to be taken are activated progressively in front of the aircraft or motor vehicle to be moved, which is thus enabled to follow. At the intersection between two or more taxiways stop bar lights are positioned horizontally and across the entire width of the individual taxiway. Said stop bar lights if lit up indicate the obligation to stop. In short it concerns a "stop-go" system of guiding the pilot or driver of the motor vehicle, which substitutes and surpasses the function of the classic "follow-me", that is the vehicle which precedes the aircraft at a short distance in front of it to indicate the route which it must follow. The activation of the switching on/off of the central lights present in various runways or taxiways may be carried out manually on the initiative of the personnel of the control tower, or preferably, automatically by means of the relative control system.
In their new function of "intelligent" traffic guiding, the airport signalling lights thus take on a fundamental role for achieving conditions of safety in airport ground traffic and thus are very important in all the above mentioned systems which control their operation automatically.
It is known from WO 90/04242 of a method and a system to supervise and check the field lights in an airport, regulate the intensity of the lights and to receive information regarding the condition of the lights, said method and said system being able to integrate further a system of ground traffic control connecting to proper presence detectors. Said method and said system, as appears clearly in the description of the above-mentioned document and from FIG. 2 thereof, concern almost exclusively the feeding systems of the "parallel" type airport lighting, which is not considered to operate in "series" type systems. It is known for this purpose that the majority of "parallel" type feeding systems for the electrical current of airport lights is realized through DC regulators, series circuits and series transformers for one or more lamps (see diagram 1 of FIG. 1 of
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Cazzani Umberto
Pavarotti Remo
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