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A review of UK developments in aircraft fuel management systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

M.A. Beeny
M.A. Beeny*
Affiliation:
Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough
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Summary

There is a history of criticism from aircraft operators, both civil and military, regarding the poor reliability of fuel associated systems, especially gauging, and the high pilot workloads that can result when a malfunction occurs during flight of light strike aircraft. In response the Ministry of Defence (Procurement Executive) sponsored work, initially at Smiths Industries and later at British Aerospace to investigate improved gauging and fuel management using digital concepts. It is concluded from flight trials that digital gauging will provide increased accuracy over a range of aircraft attitudes and with greater reliability than current analogue systems. Further, in a military aircraft, there are many advantages in a microprocessor based fuel management system which integrates fuel measurement, transfer and warning functions. These include reduced pilot workload, higher system integrity, fault detection, and system reconfiguration following battle damage. The evolutionary process leads naturally towards consideration of the inclusion of the fuel system functions in the centralised management of all the utility systems, based on Def Stan 00-18 data bus. Practical investigations of microcomputer based fuel and other utility systems are required to ensure that their full potential is realised within the limits imposed by the need for cost effective solutions.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 87 , Issue 868 , October 1983 , pp. 301 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 1992 

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