The Boeing Company

Geoffrey E Gouette

Michael Allan Long

Farid Piroozmandi

Steven L Wehr

Sudershan K Taneja

Kristine K Weed

Steven B White

Paul A VanGinhoven

Ralph E Fossen

James M Merrick

Brian L Collen

An onboard system and method for determining the instantaneous weight and balance of an aircraft simply, reliably, accurately, and requiring a minimum amount of calibration includes a memory for storing previously determined breakout friction data of the aircraft's landing gear shock struts, sensors for sensing the pressures in the struts, the vertical loads exerted by the landing gear on the aircraft, and the attitude of the aircraft relative to the horizontal during loading or unloading thereof, and a computer for computing the vertical load in each of the landing gears from the stored calibration breakout friction data and the shock strut pressures, landing gear vertical loads and aircraft attitude sensed during the loading or unloading. The computer then computes the gross weight of the aircraft and the location of its center of gravity (CG) using the computed vertical loads in the landing gears.

Onboard aircraft weight and balance system

An onboard system for determining the instantaneous weight and balance of an aircraft simply, reliably, accurately, and requiring a minimum amount of calibration includes a memory for storing previously determined breakout friction data of the aircraft's landing gear shock struts, sensors for sensing the pressures in the struts, the vertical loads exerted by the landing gear on the aircraft, and the attitude of the aircraft relative to the horizontal during loading or unloading thereof, and a computer for computing the vertical load in each of the landing gears from the stored calibration breakout friction data and the shock strut pressures, landing gear vertical loads and aircraft attitude sensed during the loading or unloading. The computer then computes the gross weight of the aircraft and the location of its center of gravity (CG) using the computed vertical loads in the landing gears.

A tip alarm system for an aircraft having a nose landing gear (NLG) includes a sensor having first and second parts respectively disposed on first and second portions of the NLG that are respectively fixed to the aircraft and moveable relative to the fixed portion and operable to detect the position of the first and second portions relative to each other and to produce a tip alarm signal when the first and second NLG portions are disposed at a selected position relative to each other corresponding to an imminent aircraft tipping condition and thereby prevent the aircraft from tipping back onto the ground due to improper loading of the aircraft.

Aircraft tip alarm system

Growing community of inventors

Stanwood, WA, United States of America

Geoffrey E Gouette