Liquid Crystal

Airbus Avionics Displays

AIRBUS has recently decided to prepare new cockpit displays to improve the cost of ownership of this system and to offer enhanced and new features.The A320 and A340 families are the targets for the installation of these New cockpit displays which will be, in a second step, widely installed on the other new Airbus families.The new cockpit displays involve the replacement of the Display Management Computers and the Display Units by new units with a minimum impact on the aircraft. It will be installed both in forward fit and retrofit conditions.The new Display Units are no longer CRTs (Cathode Ray Tubes), but LCDs (Liquid Crystal Displays) flat panels. The LCD is now a mature technology which presents very good optical performances, even better than the CRTs in sunshine conditions, and a larger display area for the same outside equipment size.The new cockpit displays will greatly improve the maintenance costs and will provide benefits in terms of necessary volume for their installation, power supply requirement and weight.The new cockpit displays will, in addition to the conventional flight, navigation, engines, aircraft systems and warnings displays, also introduce new functions- SMGCS (Surface Movement Guidance and Control System) : display of airport maps and aircraft movement on ground, - CDTI (Cockpit Display of Traffic Information) : in-flight traffic surveillance display - CFIT (Controlled Flight into Terrain) : terrain information display - Weather Forecast data displayAdditional features will be introduced with the new cockpit displays : video recording of the displayed images, hard copy of the display, "windows" like capability : windowing, icons, scroll bars, pointing device, bitmap and 3D displays, ...The new Display Management Computers and cockpit Displays Units will be based on up to date and powerful technologies featuring new avionics solutions : high throughput processor, large size memory, partitioned software, fast downloading of all the software.These computers will allow an easy stepped introduction new functions and even further new functions as soon as they are defined.The technologies selected in this development will be reused in new avionics future architectures as well as the application software which will be fully portable.Future Avionics:INTEGRATED MODULAR AVIONICSThe capacities offered by electronic technologies now enable AIRBUS Industrie to go well beyond the ARINC 600 LRU solutions of the current aircraft families.The future of avionics is based on integrated modular avionics.The basic principle is advanced standardization and sharing of resources between several aircraft systems.In conventional avionics, the main functions are ensured by independent computers which each include a power supply, data acquisition and exchange capacities, processing resources (microprocessor and memory) and resident software supporting the functional software. Each computer acquires the data it requires. The various computers are developed independently of each other.In integrated modular avionics, a rack consisting of modules connected by a backplane bus will accommodate several functions. The power supply will be common to these functions. Also, acquisitions will be made once and shared by the various functions that also share common processing resources.Modular avionics leads to reductions in weight, volume and electrical power consumption. Apart from the reduction in costs obtained by the sharing of the resources (reduction in onboard electronics), these new concepts also enable a reduction in:- development costs by reducing the number of different items of equipment, - recurring costs by the increased number of equipment of same type, - operating costs by reducing stocks (less onboard equipment), reduction in unjustified removal rate (improvement in reliability, capability to detect and identify failures, fault tolerance enabling deferred maintenance in … Read more

The Body's Crystal Matrix - Part Two

The human body is a sophisticated, multi-faceted antenna system comprised of a crystalline matrix that is constantly transmitting and receiving (transceiving) all manner of informed energies. The matrix is mainly comprised of two special types of crystals known as piezo and liquid crystals. In Part One, we covered the function of piezo crystals and how they convert electrical energy into mechanical energy and vice versa, creating piezoelectricity. In Part Two, we will investigate the roll of liquid crystals in the body's matrix.Like piezo crystals, liquid crystals also detect mechanical stress and change shape. These are the same sort of crystals found in many flat-screen computer monitors...