A €5.5 million ($8.7 million) 36-month European Union project is under way to develop an automated design and verification process for digital fuel systems.
The aim is to reduce time-to-market and related costs by up to 70% while improving in-service reliability by 25%.
The SmartFuel Automated Design and Simulation Process (ADSP) project is an EU Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) led by Rellingen, Germany based-Autoflug, which began in December 2006 and ends in November 2009.
The project builds on the work of the Fifth Framework Programme project SmartFuel. The FP6 project ADSP aims to achieve a 50% reduction in the cost of new systems through the better use of COTS components, a 40% reduction in maintenance costs by better design and the aforementioned reliability and development improvements.
Another goal is the replacement of the breadboarding of new fuel management systems with simulation.
Despite ADSP's design and simulation focus, one element of the future fuel management system has already been selected: the Time-Triggered Protocol (TTP) databus. ADSP co-ordinator and Autoflug fuel systems project manager Stefan Frewer says: "TTP fits best the requirements of a future-proof fuel management system."
TTP is an electronics architecture developed by Austrian company TTTech Computertechnik. Because of the selection of a TTP databus the ADSP project will also use TTTech Computertechnik's design software, TTP Tools. Other project partners include Eurocopter Deutschland, Secondo Mona, ASG Luftfahrttechnik and Sensorik, University Alcalá, Goodrich Actuation Systems, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Piaggio Aero Industrie, the Czech Space Research Center and Vysoke Ucení Technicke v Brne.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
