Math Is Fun Forum

Jai Ganesh

Administrator

Registered: 2005-06-28

Posts: 51,538

Avionics

Avionics

Gist

Avionics engineering is a specialized field within aerospace engineering that focuses on the electronic systems used in aircraft, spacecraft, and satellites. It encompasses the design, development, testing, and maintenance of these systems, which are crucial for the safe and efficient operation of aerospace vehicles.

Being an avionics technician can be a challenging yet rewarding career. Avionics technicians are responsible for maintaining, repairing, and installing all components related to aircraft electronics and aviation systems. While this is a vital job for the safety of aircraft, it can also pose some unique challenges.

Summary

Avionics engineering refers to the electronic systems used within the aerospace industry. This term blends the words “aviation” and “electronics.”

All aerospace vehicles, including aircraft, satellites, and spacecraft, require avionics. Avionic systems also use various functions, such as navigation, communications, displays, and more.

Avionics engineers work hands-on with the modern systems associated with the internal electronics for aerospace vehicles to improve flight safety and fuel efficiency, but the internal systems used in avionics engineering technology can be complex.

How to Become an Avionics Engineer

To become a professional aerospace avionics engineer, you’ll need to study the field of aviation electronics and understand each innovative concept. Part of the term “avionics” covers the equipment that pilots use in flight, including navigation, weather radar, and radio communications.

Avionics also focuses on the electronic systems that aerospace vehicles require to monitor the flight and maintain performance. Technicians within avionics engineering must be highly skilled and understand how to check for quality assurance.

Aerospace vehicles require maintenance and possible part replacement, so avionics engineers help ensure that the flight systems work properly at all times.

Avionics engineers will also need to implement standard safety procedures while diagnosing technical difficulties and providing equipment repairs as needed.

Job Duties of an Avionics Engineer

Avionics engineers, otherwise known as electronic engineers and engineering technicians, hold plenty of responsibilities. UItimately, this prominent role in the engineering industry ensures that aerospace vehicles can operate safely.

The impactful work of an avionics engineer may also help cut harmful energy costs, leaving a positive impact on the environment.

Here are some of the primary responsibilities you can expect to have as an avionics engineer:

* Implement standard safety procedures for technical issues and routine maintenance
* Handle the design, development, testing, and production of various avionic equipment, including internal systems
* Repair aerospace avionics equipment as necessary
* Adhere to safety standards
* Improve flight safety and fuel efficiency
* Create acceptance criteria for design methods
* Implement sustainable practices to reduce high energy costs.

Details

Avionics (a portmanteau of aviation and electronics) are the electronic systems used on aircraft. Avionic systems include communications, navigation, the display and management of multiple systems, and the hundreds of systems that are fitted to aircraft to perform individual functions. These can be as simple as a searchlight for a police helicopter or as complicated as the tactical system for an airborne early warning platform.

History

The term "avionics" was coined in 1949 by Philip J. Klass, senior editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine as a portmanteau of "aviation electronics".

Radio communication was first used in aircraft just prior to World War I. The first airborne radios were in zeppelins, but the military sparked development of light radio sets that could be carried by heavier-than-air craft, so that aerial reconnaissance biplanes could report their observations immediately in case they were shot down. The first experimental radio transmission from an airplane was conducted by the U.S. Navy in August 1910. The first aircraft radios transmitted by radiotelegraphy. They required a two-seat aircraft with a second crewman who operated a telegraph key to spell out messages in Morse code. During World War I, amplitude modulation voice two way radio sets were made possible in 1917 by the development of the triode vacuum tube, which were simple enough that the pilot in a single seat aircraft could use it while flying.

Radar, the central technology used today in aircraft navigation and air traffic control, was developed by several nations, mainly in secret, as an air defense system in the 1930s during the runup to World War II. Many modern avionics have their origins in World War II wartime developments. For example, autopilot systems that are commonplace today began as specialized systems to help bomber planes fly steadily enough to hit precision targets from high altitudes. Britain's 1940 decision to share its radar technology with its U.S. ally, particularly the magnetron vacuum tube, in the famous Tizard Mission, significantly shortened the war. Modern avionics is a substantial portion of military aircraft spending. Aircraft like the F-15E and the now retired F-14 have roughly 20 percent of their budget spent on avionics. Most modern helicopters now have budget splits of 60/40 in favour of avionics.

The civilian market has also seen a growth in cost of avionics. Flight control systems (fly-by-wire) and new navigation needs brought on by tighter airspaces, have pushed up development costs. The major change has been the recent boom in consumer flying. As more people begin to use planes as their primary method of transportation, more elaborate methods of controlling aircraft safely in these high restrictive airspaces have been invented.

Modern avionics

Avionics plays a heavy role in modernization initiatives like the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Next Generation Air Transportation System project in the United States and the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) initiative in Europe. The Joint Planning and Development Office put forth a roadmap for avionics in six areas:

* Published Routes and Procedures – Improved navigation and routing
* Negotiated Trajectories – Adding data communications to create preferred routes dynamically
* Delegated Separation – Enhanced situational awareness in the air and on the ground
* LowVisibility/CeilingApproach/Departure – Allowing operations with weather constraints with less ground infrastructure
* Surface Operations – To increase safety in approach and departure
* ATM Efficiencies – Improving the air traffic management (ATM) process

Market

The Aircraft Electronics Association reports $1.73 billion avionics sales for the first three quarters of 2017 in business and general aviation, a 4.1% yearly improvement: 73.5% came from North America, forward-fit represented 42.3% while 57.7% were retrofits as the U.S. deadline of January 1, 2020 for mandatory ADS-B out approach.

Additional Information

Avionics, (derived from the expression “aviation electronics”), is the development and production of electronic instruments for use in aviation and astronautics. The term also refers to the instruments themselves. Such instruments consist of a wide variety of control, performance, communications, and radio navigation devices and systems.

Control apparatus includes the attitude gyro and any number of instruments that indicate power, such as the tachometer (in propeller craft), torquemeter (in turboprops), and exhaust pressure ratio indicator (in turbojets). Performance instruments include the altimeter, Machmeter, turn and slip indicator, and varied devices that show airspeed, vertical velocity, and angle of attack. Communications instruments include two-way radios allowing direct voice communication between the aircraft and the ground as well as other aircraft; these operate across a wide spectrum, ranging from high frequency (HF) through very high frequency (VHF) to ultrahigh frequency (UHF). Electronic radio navigation equipment ranges from radar to instrument landing systems.

---

It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.