Electronic Acceleration Switch with Voting Logic
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Solution Overview
Problem
Mechanical acceleration monitors used in vehicles and missiles are large, heavy, and prone to single-point failures due to mechanical contacts, which can lead to reliability issues and poor signal integrity, making them unsuitable for safety-critical applications.
Innovation Solution
An electronic acceleration switch with multiple power sources, sensors, channels, and controllers, incorporating a voting scheme to ensure accurate data transmission and redundancy, preventing single-point failures by using both analog and digital accelerometers and requiring multiple sensors to trigger critical events.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If mechanical acceleration monitors are used, then the system is simple to understand and implement, but the device becomes large, heavy, and unreliable due to mechanical contacts
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces mechanical acceleration monitors with electronic acceleration sensors and solid-state switching devices. This substitution eliminates mechanical contacts that cause chatter and reliability issues, while using electronic circuits to perform the same acceleration detection and switching functions. The electronic system is more reliable and has better electrical properties without the drawbacks of mechanical wear and contact bounce.
2Reliability
If redundant components are added to prevent single-point failures, then the system reliability improves, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the acceleration monitoring system into multiple independent channels, each with its own accelerometer and switching circuitry. This segmentation allows the system to tolerate failures in individual channels while maintaining overall functionality. The modular architecture reduces the impact of single-point failures without requiring overly complex interconnections between components.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent incorporates voting logic that continuously monitors outputs from multiple accelerometers and controllers. This feedback mechanism compares signals from redundant components and only triggers a response when there is consensus among the channels, preventing erroneous activations due to sensor failures while maintaining system reliability through intelligent signal processing.
Data Source
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AI summary
An electronic acceleration switch (10), such as for arming and firing a squib, includes multiple redundancies to provide a fail-safe system that does not have a single-point failure. The switch includes different channels (12,14), each of which includes a power subsystem, multiple accelerometers, a pair of controllers, and a switching circuit. The power subsystems of the two channels provide power to multiple accelerometers of each channel. The accelerometers of each channel may include a mix of digital and analog accelerometers. The acceleration sensors can be either one-axis or three-axis sensors. The accelerometers are connected to the controllers of both channels. The controllers provide redundancy for each channel. In addition, the controllers include voting logic that receives inputs from the accelerometers, and determines whether to send arm and enable signals to the multiple squib drivers.