NEW TECHNOLOGIES
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22nd Sep 06. Airbus Military has today successfully achieved the sixth contractual milestone of the A400M programme. “Milestone Six”, which involves the acceptance by the customer of the Class Two A400M Cockpit Mock-up is particularly significant since it is designated as one of the six “Critical Milestones” whereby the programme as a whole may be rejected by the customer on the grounds of non-compliance. Other critical milestones include the start of final production, the first flight and certification and delivery of the first aircraft to a customer. The Class Two Mock-up is an exact replica of the aircraft’s operational cockpit and is, essentially, a full-scale laboratory designed to test and verify a number of important parameters in the overall cockpit environment. Using the new facility, a comprehensive programme will be undertaken to validate the detailed design and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the man-machine interface, ensuring that vital information is correctly perceived by the flight crew and that vital actions can be efficiently carried out by them. Parameters to be studied include crew comfort and mobility, ergonomics, field of vision inside and outside the cockpit, ventilation, access and egress, and the viability of equipment / structure interfaces.
21 Sep 06. BAE Systems is leading the way in “mixed-signal” technology that will significantly reduce the size, weight, and power consumption of military electronic systems while increasing performance. Silicon computer chips soon will be able to perform digital, radio frequency, and photonic functions in a single chip. BAE Systems recently was awarded $6 million under Phase II of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Electronic and Photonic Integrated Circuits (EPIC) program to further develop the technology. The company is taking a mature electronics process in CMOS and adapting it to add complex photonics functions — ranging from the photonic processing of massive amounts of RF bandwidth to extremely high-speed digital interconnects. CMOS-compatible devices the team developed during EPIC’s Phase I include monolithic integration of ultra-low-power-consumption silicon ring optical modulators, fourth-order narrowband optical filters with tuneable passbands and center wavelengths, and silicon-germanium waveguide photodetectors. The Phase II award brings the total EPIC contract value to nearly $14 million. DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office manages the EPIC program. BAE Systems’ EPIC team includes subcontractors Bell Laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, and Applied Wave Research.
27 Sep 06. Raytheon Company has delivered its next-generation F-15 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar system to the U.S. Air Force. Following the successful integration of the radar at Boeing’s F-15 facility
in St. Louis, the program now enters its final phase of developmental testing. This entails multiple flight tests during the coming months designed to establish the AESA radar system is meeting expected performance requirements.
Sep 06. Renault fist with Goodyear Duraseal. Goodyear says Renault Trucks is the first European truck maker to offer its Duraseal Technology – ‘The Tyre that Repairs itself’. Customers that order new Renault Kerax construction truck MODels will have the choice of Goodyear Omnitrac mixed service drive axle or steering tyres featuring Duraseal Technology. This unique Goodyear-patented technology uses a built-in gel-like rubber compound which, when an object such as a nail penetrates it, flows into the puncture and creates an air-tight seal. This stops air escaping if an object of up to 6 mm diameter penetrates the tread and can do it again and again without need for tyre repairs. This self- seal feature cuts downtime and tyre costs, the firm says. (Source: Transport News Brief)
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