Communications: electrical – Aircraft alarm or indicating systems – Flight alarm
Patent
1989-01-06
1990-06-26
Orsino, Joseph A.
Communications: electrical
Aircraft alarm or indicating systems
Flight alarm
73178T, 244181, 340963, 364433, G08B 2300
Patent
active
049375717
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for elaborating, on board an aircraft, an alarm signal in the event of a mini-tornado.
2. Background Art
"Mini-tornado" is understood to mean the meteorological disturbances commonly designated in aeronautics by the English words "windshear", "downburst" or "microburst".
Such mini-tornados are essentially constituted by violent descending eddying airstreams whose speed may be greater than 10 m/s and which present horizontal velocity components.
Although there is little probability that an aircraft will encounter such a mini-tornado during take-off or landing, nonetheless the danger exists that an aircraft pancakes on the ground by a mini-tornado during these flight phases, during which its safety margin is relatively sensitive. During the last twenty years, it is estimated that mini-tornados have been responsible for about thirty take-off and landing accidents, having caused more than 600 deaths.
The meteorological phenomenon of mini-tornados is of course detectable from the ground and it has already been thought to equip aerodromes with appropriate detectors, but experience has unfortunately proved that the detection of the mini-tornados on the ground, even with complex means, could not, at the present time, give an alarm in a sufficiently short time on board an aircraft to avoid all danger.
It has also already been thought to provide on board aircraft systems for detecting mini-tornados capable of delivering an alarm signal when the force thereof exceeds a predetermined threshold.
As will be seen hereinafter, the vertical and horizontal velocity components of airstreams are easy to calculate at all points of a mini-tornado, from the inertial, anemometric and incidence information delivered by the specialized equipment embarked on board modern aircraft. In the known systems mentioned above, said vertical and horizontal velocity components are thus exploited. However, this results in numerous untimely alarms. In fact, these known systems cannot take into account the energy of the aircraft, due essentially to the speed thereof, at the moment of measuring said velocity components of the air streams. Consequently, whether the aircraft moves slowly or quickly, the known alarm systems are triggered off for the same values of said components. Now, even when the triggering-off values of these components are exceeded, this may result in no danger for the aircraft if the latter has acquired a high energy.
BROAD DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to overcome this drawback of the known detection systems. It relates to a system presenting a very high sensitivity of triggering off an alarm, but avoiding untimely alarms.
To that end, according to the invention, the system for elaborating on board an aircraft an alarm signal in the event of a mini-tornado, comprising a computer device allowing signals to be obtained representative of the velocities of the horizontal wind and of the vertical wind, to which said aircraft is subjected, from the information on velocities, trim and incidence delivered by the on-board equipment of said aircraft, is noteworthy in that it comprises: representative of said velocity of the horizontal wind with respect to time; values of said derivative; said derivative; said signal representative of said velocity of the vertical wind and said first and second signals and by the subtraction of said signal representative of the mean velocity of the horizontal wind during a period prior to that of the operations effected by said system; and of said third signal; guaranteeing a minimum safety energy of the aircraft; and than said predetermined threshold of incidence.
In this way, according to the invention, the horizontal velocity and vertical velocity components of the airstreams of a mini-tornado are taken into account by determining the velocity of the horizontal wind and the velocity of the vertical wind, respectively, in order, as will be explained in greater deta
REFERENCES:
patent: 4043194 (1977-08-01), Tanner
patent: 4079905 (1978-03-01), Greene
patent: 4725811 (1988-02-01), Muller et al.
patent: 4728951 (1988-03-01), Johnson et al.
patent: 4763266 (1988-08-01), Schultz et al.
Aerospatiale - Societe Nationale Industrielle
Orsino Joseph A.
Swarthout Brent A.
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