Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Technology into Heaven

The following year, two planes collided in mid-air over Überlingen in the south of Germany on the edge of Lake Constance. One was a Russian passenger flight from Moscow to Barcelona, while the other was a cargo plane heading for Belgium from the Persian Gulf. Seventy-one persons died.

Safety need to be improved

As air transport grows, take-offs become more tightly spaced and more and more planes are circling airports as they wait for permission to land, the potential for disasters increases.

Last year alone, international air traffic grew by 5.9 percent. Parallel to this increase, the minimum distance between aircraft in the air in European airspace has decreased. The minimum vertical distance between aircraft has been halved from 600 metres to 300 for planes flying above 29000 feet. The idea has been to increase airspace capacity by 20 percent. Routes are shortened, and airlines expect to save the huge sum of NOK 30 billion a year in fuel costs alone.

But what above safety up there? In the wake of a number of disasters in the air in 2001 and 2002, the EU took up the problem and resolved that certain aspects of the industry should be studied in detail and evaluated in terms of safety. Several projects were launched under its 6th Framework Programme. One of these was the HASTEC project, which was to develop the next generation of pressure sensors for better aircraft altitude measurement.

Next-generation sensors

Almost three years ago SINTEF and Memscap, a company based in Horten, applied for funding to produce the next generation of precision aircraft altimeters. Together with British and Rumanian partners, the Norwegians were awarded funding for a project worth almost NOK 3 million. The project aims to raise current technology through the next generation of pressure sensors and to produce a sensor platform for the next 20 years.

Today, the partners have almost reached their goal.

“There is a need for aircraft sensors that are more accurate than current models, which are large and reliable, but expensive systems,” says Sigurd Moe of SINTEF ICT. “Among other things, they need to be more stable throughout their life-cycle. The problem with current sensors is that they need to be checked and calibrated regularly, and this is an expensive process since the aircraft needs to be grounded.

Memscap

“Most people are unaware that one of the key components in international aircraft today is based on Norwegian technology,” says Ole Henrik Gusland of Memscap. The company has been producing sensors for the aircraft industry for more than 20 years, and has recently supplied cabin pressure sensors for the Airbus 380 mega-jumbo jet and Boeing's 787 Dreamliner.

The Norwegian company used to be a subsidiary of SensoNor, but was bought up by Memscap SA in 2002. Its product portfolio comprises both high-precision pressure sensors for aircraft and medical pressure sensors.

Two aircraft that have been allocated the same flight corridor need to maintain exactly the correct altitude during the whole flight if they are to avoid problems, explains Gusland. “This means that the altimeters must be correct even if the plane moves through warm and cold air strata, and such accuracy must be maintained throughout the lifetime of the aircraft. On the ground and in the air over Dubai, for example, temperatures can range from plus fifty to minus sixty degrees. Temperature differences of this magnitude are a great challenge for aircraft electronic systems. Airlines want to ground their craft as seldom as possible for calibration.”

MiNaLab

Until recently, Memscap used SensoNor to manufacture silicon chips which are then mounted and encapsulated, but since SensoNor has been bought up by a huge German concern, Memscap has been using SINTEF's Micro and Nanolaboratory for most of its R & D-oriented projects.

“SINTEF is research-oriented, and we regard SINTEF as a small-scale manufacturer and as a supplement to others, because they are close at hand and have a great deal of advanced new equipment for producing sensors,” says Gusland.

Challenges

“When a new sensor chip is being developed, it is important to understand the customer's criteria. These define our frame conditions and set out guidelines for the design. In this case, the fundamental requirement was an extremely stable signal. The sensor must not be affected by external conditions,” says Sigurd Moe of SINTEF ICT.

The problem is that mechanical tensions may develop in the connection with the sensor package itself. The scientists therefore had to produce a silicon based sensor structure in which such tensions would not transmit/propogate into the chip itself. The solution was a spiral silicon element in which the pressure-sensitive part was not affected even if the mounting stretches and drags the element.

SINTEF produces silicon wafers with hundreds of chips on each wafer, several of which are laid on top of each other and glued together before being sawn into chips. Individual chips are then selected and integrated into a sensor package that has been developed by Memscap. The company produces, assembles and tests the sensor package itself.

The first prototype has now been delivered to Memscap by the scientists for further testing and mounting. During the first six months of 2008 these new-technology sensors will be flight tested.

“We believe that the new design is extremely good, and we can see that it possesses promising features capable of meeting the requirements of the aircraft of the future,” says Sigurd Moe.

Aase Dragland | alfa
Further information:
http://www.sintef.com

Im Focus: (Re)solving the jet/cocoon riddle of a gravitational wave event

An international research team including astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, has combined radio telescopes from five continents to prove the existence of a narrow stream of material, a so-called jet, emerging from the only gravitational wave event involving two neutron stars observed so far. With its high sensitivity and excellent performance, the 100-m radio telescope in Effelsberg played an important role in the observations.

In August 2017, two neutron stars were observed colliding, producing gravitational waves that were detected by the American LIGO and European Virgo detectors....

Im Focus: Light from a roll – hybrid OLED creates innovative and functional luminous surfaces

Up to now, OLEDs have been used exclusively as a novel lighting technology for use in luminaires and lamps. However, flexible organic technology can offer much more: as an active lighting surface, it can be combined with a wide variety of materials, not just to modify but to revolutionize the functionality and design of countless existing products. To exemplify this, the Fraunhofer FEP together with the company EMDE development of light GmbH will be presenting hybrid flexible OLEDs integrated into textile designs within the EU-funded project PI-SCALE for the first time at LOPEC (March 19-21, 2019 in Munich, Germany) as examples of some of the many possible applications.

The Fraunhofer FEP, a provider of research and development services in the field of organic electronics, has long been involved in the development of...

Im Focus: Regensburg physicists watch electron transfer in a single molecule

For the first time, an international team of scientists based in Regensburg, Germany, has recorded the orbitals of single molecules in different charge states in a novel type of microscopy. The research findings are published under the title “Mapping orbital changes upon electron transfer with tunneling microscopy on insulators” in the prestigious journal “Nature”.

The building blocks of matter surrounding us are atoms and molecules. The properties of that matter, however, are often not set by these building blocks...

Im Focus: University of Konstanz gains new insights into the recent development of the human immune system

Scientists at the University of Konstanz identify fierce competition between the human immune system and bacterial pathogens

Cell biologists from the University of Konstanz shed light on a recent evolutionary process in the human immune system and publish their findings in the...

Im Focus: Transformation through Light

Laser physicists have taken snapshots of carbon molecules C₆₀ showing how they transform in intense infrared light

When carbon molecules C₆₀ are exposed to an intense infrared light, they change their ball-like structure to a more elongated version. This has now been...