Zodiac Aerotechnics

Safran Aerotechnics

Stéphane Souques

Daniel Lamourette

Thomas Lavazais

A capacitor fuel probe comprises a plurality of capacitor segments which are superposed on one another along a probe axis. The capacitor segments are distributed into three sets and connected electrically in parallel within each set separately. A capacity measurement which is performed for all the sets allows determining a fuel level while taking into account a possible variation of a dielectric constant of the fuel parallel to the probe axis. Top height values hof the capacitor segments are selected so that h&#x3c;h&#xb7;(K&#x2212;1)/(K&#x2212;1), for any integer n-value from 2 to N, N being the number of capacitor segments, n varying according a superposition order of the capacitor segments, and Kand Kbeing minimum and maximum values for a fuel dielectric constant which are prescribed for the capacitor fuel probe.

Capacitor fuel probe

A fluid gauging system includes a set of fuel level probes and two computation modules adapted for inferring fluid level information based on measurement signals which originate from the probes. In a refuelling operation mode, the probes are distributed into two dynamically configurable subsets, which are separate and assigned respectively to the computation modules for deriving two results for the fluid level independently from each other. Such system has special interests for fuel tank equipment designed for aircraft. A major advantage is a reduction in the total number of fuel level probes which are necessary to obtain reliable results whatever the fuel level and the aircraft attitude and acceleration.

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Abondant, France

Stéphane Souques