FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1994
1994 - 0925.PDF
BOEING 777 TECHNICAL UPDATE Boeing refers to it as "...the brains of the aircraft — and that's really what it is", says Honeywell 777 programme manager, Don Mor row, describing the new twinjet's aircraft information management system (AIMS). The AIMS consists essentially of two identical cabinets holding all the central processing and input/output hardware to perform flight management, control of displays, central maintenance, aircraft- condition monitoring and digital communications management. The AIMS is also used to handle flightdeck data- acquisition and communications, engine- data interface and data conversion. Without all these, nothing else on the Contents Inside the AIMS Databus network Laboratory advances Fly-by-wire first 24 26 28 30 777 would work, making Honeywell's task of creating a fully functioning AIMS vital from the beginning. "AIMS had to be there for everything else, and it had to be there early on to validate the systems it supports," says Morrow. To achieve these goals, Honeywell turned its back on traditional systems architectures which require each line- Boeing takes a hig step into the future on 9 April when it rolls out its latest twinjet, the 777. Never before has a single new Boeing airliner incorporated so many major technological advances—particularly in avionics. GuyNorris looks at these key systems in the 777 and assesses the impact of Boeing's new development tool — the Integrated Aircraft Systems Laboratory. INSIDE THE 777 replaceable unit to be self-contained. In stead, the company designed a cabinet in which previously federated systems could be grouped together to share resources. The resulting installation saved weight and cost, as well as improving reliability and maintainability. To group everything together, Honey well used two major avionics and semi conductor advances. The first was robust partitioning, which allows several soft ware packages to be used on the same computer. The second was application- specific integrated circuits (ASICs), which enable the integration of more system functions in a single processor channel. "Each computer module has different software in it, both flight-critical and non flight-critical. With robust partitioning, we keep them sepa rated as effectively as if we built a brick wall between them," says Morrow. ASICs provided a means to an end for Honeywell's AIMS ambitions, but they also gave the corn- Left: The first 777 off the line is seen in the background, while work is conducted on the sec ond machine. Below: Honeywell's "val idation facility" in the 777's flightdeck FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 6 - 12 April, 1994
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
