Using Aircraft as a Sensor on Contaminated Runways
In any analysis of aviation accidents, Runway Excursions (RE) are usually identified as the top cause of aircraft hull losses. Many of these accidents occur on runways where braking performance is degraded by runway surface contaminants.Airbus and its subsidiary NAVBLUE have developed a new technology to use the aircraft itself as a sensor to measure the available runway braking action, and subsequently share that data to the benefit of oncoming traffic.
Landing on contaminated runways
Landing performance is a function of the exact landing runway conditions at the time of landing. A simple statement for a more complex reality. Indeed, knowing what exact contamination is or remains on the runway at a given point in time is often challenging.
Airbus Brake Testing
Regulatory aircraft performance is certified as a set of performance models and aircraft physical characteristics that are built and validated from flight test data. While the primary purpose of these models has always been to allow computation of aircraft performance for dispatch, the models used to determine the in-flight landing distances during approach preparation are derived from the same testing. Part of this model, affecting both the accelerate-stop computation at take-off and the landing distance computation, are the characteristics of the braking system installed on the aircraft.This article explains which flight tests are involved in the identification of the system characteristics and how they are conducted.