Orbital Australia Pty Limited

Nicolass Harry Buters

Goeffrey Paul Cathcart

Tyron Dean Utley

Jayesh Narayan

The ignition system () of an engine (particularly for a UAV) has a primary (), and a secondary () ignition system to provide redundancy for 'get you home' capability should the primary ignition system fail. The secondary ignition provides a lower energy or shorter duration spark than the higher energy or longer duration sparking of the primary ignition system, and is retarded relative to primary sparking. Timing of the secondary sparking can be advanced in the event of primary sparking failure. Fuelling strategy can be shifted from a leaner stratified charge to a richer homogenous charge when relying just on the secondary ignition system for ignition. The secondary ignition system can be of a lower spark energy and/or duration than the primary ignition system, avoiding the cost, complexity and weight of replicating the primary ignition system, and to improve packaging within the engine housing, particularly within the limited payload and space limits of a UAV.

Ignition control and system for an engine of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)

Redundancy in engine timing position sensing maintains a UAV operational in the event of failure of a primary engine timing position sub-system. The redundancy avoids duplication of the primary crankshaft timing position sensing components, and avoids adding weight, cost and component complexity. Conditioned (square) waveform(s) () is/are created from respective sinusoidal waveform(s). Each consecutive leading edge () and trailing edge () of the pulses of the square waveform () is derived from the crossing of the zero voltage value by consecutive sinusoidal waveforms A,B,C (e.g. Voltage (V) vs Time (t) or angular degrees). The square pulse waveform () is output () to a microcontroller () to create and output a pseudo crankshaft timing position signal () to be used by an ECU to determine ignition and fuel injection events in the event that the primary timing signal from the crankshaft position sensor (CPS) has failed. The signal () output to the ECU can have a missing pulse () (i.e. indicative of a TDC position of the engine crankshaft) as well as multiple square pulses () corresponding to the pulses of the initial square pulse waveform (). The waveform signal () is therefore derived from the alternator waveform signal(s) and provides a pseudo crankshaft timing position signal in the event of failure of the primary or initial CPS signal.

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Maylands, Australia

Nicolass Harry Buters