Technical Alternatives for Pitot Tubes?
Joined: Jan 2015
Posts: 1
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From: derbyshire
Air velocity correlation to aircraft location
When real time streaming of position and aircraft parameters becomes the norm over black box recording, there might be enough collective data to derive wind velocity maps. i.e. comparing GPS with working pitot static data in the majority of working planes travelling known routes. Apart from general meteo' data gathering uses, might that be useful for an aircraft with trouble to at least have a stab at estimating local wind from GPS as secondary / backup - or could there be a use for comparing the two sirspeed data sets if pitot dynamic (and possibly static) information is lost ?
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 2,188
Likes: 6
From: La Belle Province
Yes, you can. In fact there a whole bunch of ADs out thee regarding exactly that (at least one of the airbus ADs has an active thread I think)
What you do gain is having a (slightly) different means of sensing airspeed, but both are ultimately sensors, in the airflow, somewhere on the nose. That means the are still common cause failures that need to be addressed. The goal is to design those to be sufficiently improbable that a procedural solution is acceptable . i.e. pitch/power tables.
What you do gain is having a (slightly) different means of sensing airspeed, but both are ultimately sensors, in the airflow, somewhere on the nose. That means the are still common cause failures that need to be addressed. The goal is to design those to be sufficiently improbable that a procedural solution is acceptable . i.e. pitch/power tables.
Joined: Jun 2009
Posts: 1,344
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From: Bedford, UK
Isn't there a role for the INS here, admittedly not for sensing AoA ? OK won't help avoid a stall but the initial developing downwards motion must be sensed by the INS and integrated up to give the speed? Could be that today's clever data fusion technology mean that currently the output is potentially contaminated by bad ADR data but the inertial calculations over a short period would be good wouldn't they?
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 2,188
Likes: 6
From: La Belle Province
XL Airways A320, 2 of 3 AOA sensors froze.
The values of the n° 1 and 2 local angles of attack recorded by the SSFDR remained fixed from FL 320 until the impact with the surface of the sea. It was not possible to determine the evolution of the value of the n° 3 local angle of attack in the course of the flight, which is not recorded. The initiation of the stall warning, however, shows that angle of attack sensor n° 3 was working at the end of the flight.
