Modular Flight Management System Architecture
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing flight management systems are complex and require significant time and cost for updates due to their inherent complexity, making it difficult to integrate new functionalities without causing system regression.
Innovation Solution
A modular flight management system architecture comprising a core module and a supplementary module, with an exchange interface, allowing for independent development and integration of supplementary functionalities without modifying the core module, facilitating simplified updates and reduced costs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If the flight management system is updated to integrate new functionalities, then the system's adaptability and versatility are improved, but the complexity of implementation and verification increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The flight management system is divided into a core module containing essential flight management functionalities and a supplementary module for additional functionalities. This segmentation allows independent development, testing, and integration of new features in the supplementary module without affecting the core module, thereby reducing implementation complexity while maintaining adaptability.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the flight management system is updated to integrate new functionalities, then the system's adaptability and versatility are improved, but the time and cost required for update increase
Solution Approach 1:
By segmenting the system into core and supplementary modules, updates can be performed independently on the supplementary module. This eliminates the need for comprehensive system-wide testing and verification, significantly reducing update time and costs while enabling continuous integration of new functionalities.
Solution Approach 2:
The supplementary module can be developed, tested, and validated independently before integration with the core module. This preliminary action allows thorough verification of new functionalities in isolation, reducing the time and cost of final system integration and update deployment.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the flight management system is updated to integrate new functionalities, then the system's adaptability and versatility are improved, but the risk of system regression increases
Solution Approach 1:
The segmentation into core and supplementary modules isolates the risk of regression to the supplementary module only. The core module remains unchanged and validated, ensuring that new functionalities in the supplementary module cannot regress core flight management functionalities, thereby maintaining system reliability while improving adaptability.
Data Source
AI summary
A flight management system architecture with separate core and supplementary modules. In the core module, generic functionalties relative to the flight management of the aircraft are implemented. In the supplementary module, supplementary functions are implemented. The supplementary functionalities include functionalties specific to an entity to which the aircraft belongs such as the specific aircraft model, a family of aircraft, a company, an alliance, and so on. The flight management system also includes a message exchange interface in which enables the core and supplementary modules to exchanges messages with each other. The core and supplementary modules includes corresponding core module and supplementary module interfacing functionaltities that respectively interface with generic and specific man-machine interfaces.