Maintenance computer system for an aircraft

• US 8,433,475 B2
• Filed: 06/05/2008
• Issued: 04/30/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/15/2007
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Airbus Operations (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company EADS NV)
• Original Assignee: Airbus Operations SAS (Airbus SE)
• Inventors: Corbefin, Jean-Philippe
• Primary Examiner(s): Tran, Khoi
• Assistant Examiner(s): MOYER, DALE S
• Application Number:
  US12/663,351
• Publication Number:
  US 20100198431A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,790 Days
• Field of Search: 701 3- 18, 701 291- 344
• US Class Current: 701/34.2
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0248 Causal models, e.g. fault tree; digraphs; qualitative physics
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0272 Presentation of monitored results, e.g. selection of status reports to be displayed; Filtering information to the user
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/105 Multiple levels of security
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks

Abstract

A maintenance computer system for an aircraft, including a network partitioned into a secured avionics zone and an open zone. The system includes a first software module accommodated in the avionics zone and a second software module accommodated in the open zone, the first module configured to follow a fault-finding logic tree, and the second module configured to present an electronic maintenance document, with the path along the fault-finding logic tree followed by the first module automatically and synchronously generating a presentation by the second module of pages of the maintenance document associated respectively with nodes of the tree.

Claims

1. A maintenance computer system for an aircraft, including a network that is partitioned into a secured avionics zone and an open zone, the system comprising:

a first computer hosting a first software module, said first computer being accommodated in the avionics zone; and

a second computer hosting a second software module, said second computer being accommodated in the open zone, and linked to the first computer via a unidirectional link going from the avionics zone to the open zone;

the first software module configured to follow a fault-finding logic tree, and the second software module configured to present an electronic maintenance document and to automatically and synchronously generate a presentation of pages of the electronic maintenance document associated respectively with nodes of the tree when the first module follows a path along the fault-finding tree.

2. A computer system according to claim 1, wherein to each node of the fault-finding logic tree there corresponds at least one maintenance task and the first module transmits to the second module a hyperlink pointing to a page of the maintenance document associated with this task when the first module reaches the node.

3. A computer system according to claim 2, wherein for each node of the fault-finding logic tree, the first module determines the next node as a function of the result of executing the maintenance task corresponding to this node.

4. A computer system according to claim 1, wherein the fault-finding logic tree is determined from a fault identifier code, the code itself being obtained from analysis of an entry in an electronic flight logbook accommodated in the avionics zone.

5. A computer system according to claim 1, wherein, if the first module determines that an equipment item in the aircraft is faulty on completing its run through the fault-finding logic tree, the system is adapted to verify the presence of this equipment in a minimum equipment list (MEL) of the aircraft held in the avionics zone.

6. A computer system according to claim 5, wherein, if the faulty equipment item is present in the MEL, the system is adapted to calculate a corresponding cost in terms of loss of functional performance or safety margins of the aircraft.

7. A computer system according to claim 5, further comprising a third software module hosted by the first computer and a fourth software module, hosted by the second computer, the third module configured to seek and select elements of the MEL, and the fourth software module being configured to present document pages corresponding to the equipment so that the selection of an element by the third software module automatically and synchronously generates the presentation by the fourth module of a document.

8. A computer system according to claim 7, wherein, for each element of the MEL, the third module transmits to the fourth module, a hyperlink pointing to a URL containing the document page relating to this element.

9. A computer system according to claim 7, wherein the inputs/outputs of the first and second computers are linked to a KVM switch, with the switch configured to switch the inputs/outputs to a common input/output interface.