The present project, VISTAC, offers cooperation between GDTech, highly skilled company in the field of simulation of thermal, fluid and multiphysics behaviour of aeronautical equipment and Equip’Aero TECHNIQUE, recognized design and production organization for aircraft fluid management equipment including innovative solutions. This strong partnership combines expertise in all required fields and experienced practice in working-in and managing research projects. These elements are a guarantee of VISTAC success.
A low weight, low cost, high reliability, and maintainability optimized multiposition valve will be developed for the needs of future generation of halon free fire extinguishing systems using a common On-Board Inert Gas Generation (OBIGGS) with the fuel tank inerting system.
The present project deals with the design of an electrically driven pneumatic valve optimized in mass, reliability, and maintainability: In the frame of the development of the halon free fire extinguishing system using Nitrogen, Using the On-Board Inert Gas Generation System (OBIGGS) already used on the aircraft (fuel tank inerting) and diverting the flow of nitrogen toward cargo.
This valve will, in response to an electrical signal, provide a variable piloted flow section. This variable flow area will permit to the system to implement a closed loop regulation. Thus, the OBIGGS will only be employed at the required level minimizing power consumption.
The overall objectives by the end of the project are:
- Develop a technically optimized valve: Designing and validate a multi-position, electrically piloted, pneumatic valve, that should be mass effective and reliable enough to achieve safety goals of the fire extinguishing system. Achievement of the above characteristics will be done by developing a new generation of actuator based on innovative principles.
- Develop a valve aiming be industrialized and be a competitive product on the market: To maximize impact the valve should be industrialized in a close future and contain the necessary potential for quick time to market. Then design choices will have to be made for industrialization, in service reliability for low number of maintenance actions, they shall consider maintainability aspect.
- Scalability: Scalability of the design must be considered, then the retained actuator technology shall permit to be adapted to other applications. The associated design toolbox shall be available at the end of the project.
This project belongs to the Cleansky 2 program.
