Onboard Fuel Evaluation System for Aircraft Altitude Deviation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current flight management systems are inefficient in quickly assessing the impact of flying at altitudes lower than planned on fuel reserves, leading to prolonged and tiresome calculations for crew to determine if they can reach the destination without fuel regulatory limits, often resulting in unforeseen fuel shortages.
Innovation Solution
An onboard evaluation system calculates fuel consumption deviations and determines a climb limit point, providing anticipatory information on the maximum distance and fuel remaining, allowing the crew to quickly assess and respond to altitude changes, and iteratively refine the climb limit point to ensure sufficient fuel reserves.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If the crew manually iterates on flight plan points to assess fuel impact of altitude changes, then they can determine fuel sufficiency, but the process becomes extremely long and tiresome
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates a copy of the active flight plan (temporary or secondary flight plan) to evaluate fuel impact scenarios. This allows the crew to assess different altitude change scenarios without modifying the actual active flight plan, enabling rapid what-if analysis while maintaining the original plan intact for reference and comparison
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary fuel impact calculations before the crew commits to altitude changes. By pre-calculating fuel consumption deviations and determining climb limit points for various scenarios, the system provides advance warning and enables informed decision-making, preventing fuel shortage situations before they occur
2Device complexity
If the flight management system assumes immediate return to initial flight level, then calculations are simple, but the fuel reserve prediction becomes inaccurate for extended low-altitude flight
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adapts fuel reserve predictions based on the actual climb limit point rather than assuming immediate return to initial flight level. It calculates the maximum distance the aircraft can travel at the selected lower altitude before fuel reserves would be insufficient, providing accurate predictions that reflect the true operational constraints
Solution Approach 2:
The system provides feedback to the crew through the display unit, showing the climb limit point and warning when the aircraft approaches this critical threshold. This feedback mechanism allows the crew to adjust their flight profile in real-time to maintain adequate fuel reserves, creating a closed-loop control system for fuel management
3Measurement precision
If the crew modifies the active flight plan to assess fuel impact, then they can get accurate predictions, but the complete recalculation at each iteration is extremely time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses a copy of the active flight plan for all evaluation calculations, allowing multiple scenario assessments without repeatedly recalculating the entire active flight plan. This copying approach enables rapid iteration through different altitude change scenarios while maintaining computational efficiency
Solution Approach 2:
The system extracts only the necessary elements from the flight plan for fuel impact calculation (such as route points, altitude levels, and distance segments) rather than processing the entire flight plan structure. This extraction of essential data reduces computational overhead while maintaining prediction accuracy
Data Source
AI summary
An evaluation method and an evaluation system onboard an aircraft in communication with a flight management system to access a flight plan stored in memory of the flight management system, where the flight plan defines a cruising level and a minimum fuel reserve to destination objective. The evaluation system comprises circuitry to calculate a fuel consumption deviation between flight at a selected cruising altitude level and flight at an altitude level initially planned by the flight plan, where the selected altitude level is lower than the altitude level initially planned, and to determine a climb limit point from the selected cruising altitude level as a function of the fuel consumption deviation and the minimum fuel reserve objective, where the climb limit point represents the last climb point respecting the minimum fuel reserve to destination objective; and interface circuitry to provide the climb limit point and anticipative information concerning the climb limit point.