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Nov  2008

Self-diagnosing aircraft can help ward off
unnecessary hard landings

     London: Futile hard landings, which may turn out to be dangerous for both the passengers and for aircraft, could now be avoided-thanks to hard-landing detector that can be fitted into planes. Hard landing detector can automatically find out any structural damage with the aircraft and tell if such a landing is needed or not. So, planes could report when they need to be checked for damage, if they are equipped with such detectors, reports New Scientist. Usually, pilots have to make hard landings in order to ensure that the plane is thoroughly checked for possible damage. However, 9 out of ten times pilot-initiated hard-landing inspections result in no finding of damage, according to the aerospace giant Boeing. In order to reduce the number of unnecessary inspections, the company has designed a hard-landing detector that monitors flight parameters such as pitch and roll rates and angles, the centre of gravity, vertical speed, vertical acceleration and airspeed of an aircraft during a landing. Such detectors will be placed on a number of aircraft to build a database of telltale features of landings that are suspected of causing structural damage. After building the knowledge base, planes could be equipped with software to accurately tell from the sensor output when to start an inspection. Administration of such detectors, reckon the scientists, should save time, human resources and money in cutting out unnecessary inspections.
-Nov 6, 2008