Search Results (5)

Fuel level gauging in aircraft presents a significant flight mechanics challenge due to the influence of aircraft movements on measurements. Moreover, it constitutes a multidimensional problem where various sensors distributed within the tank must converge to yield a precise and single measurement, independent of the aircraft’s attitude. Furthermore, fuel distribution across multiple tanks of irregular geometries complicates the readings even further. These issues critically impact safety and economy, as gauging errors may compromise flight security and lead to carrying excess weight. In response to these challenges, this research introduces a multi-stage project in aircraft fuel gauging systems, as a continuum of studies, where this first article presents a computational tool designed to simulate aircraft fuel sensor data readings as a function of fuel level, fuel tank geometry, sensor location, and aircraft attitude. Developed in an open-source environment, the tool aims to support the statistical inference required for accurate modeling in which synthetic data generation becomes a crucial component. A discretization procedure accurately maps fuel tank geometries and their mass properties. The tool, then, intersects these geometries with fuel-level planes and calculates each new volume. It integrates descriptive geometry to intersect these fuel planes with representative capacitive level-sensing probes and computes the sensor readings for the simulated flight conditions. The method is validated against geometries with analytical solutions. This process yields detailed fuel measurement responses for each sensor inside the tank, and for different analyzed fuel levels, providing insights into the sensors’ signals’ non-linear behavior at each analyzed aircraft attitude. The non-linear behavior is also influenced by the sensor saturation readings at 0 when above the fuel level and at 1 when submerged. The synthetic fuel sensor readings lay the baseline for a better understanding on how to compute the true fuel level from multiple sensor readings, and ultimately optimizing the amount of used sensors and their placement. The tool’s design offers significant improvements in aircraft fuel gauging accuracy, directly impacting aerostructures and instrumentation, and it is a key aspect of flight safety, fuel management, and navigation in aerospace technology. Full article

The present article shows the most significant steps to be taken in the process of the development of an automated system for fuel tank level monitoring and machinery location checking to optimize accessibility and mobile tracking. Fuel or energy consumption is converted with money spending and machinery in operation during different tasks. The maintenance and service costs add up to the final price of the product making it less attractive if the customer must pay more for each acquired unit of produce. Thus, optimization is required in the production system to lower the costs of energy and operation of working machinery. The main objective of the present paper is the research, development, and testing the process of an automated system designed with the purpose of controlling fuel tank level and machinery location management to improve accessibility and to optimize mobile tracking. The secondary objective consists of the installation of a volumetric sensor in the fuel tank. Full article

Understanding hydrological processes in large, open areas, such as catchments, and further modelling these processes are still open research questions. The system proposed in this work provides an automatic end-to-end pipeline from data collection to information extraction that can potentially assist hydrologists to better understand the hydrological processes using a data-driven approach. In this work, the performance of a low-cost off-the-shelf self contained sensor unit, which was originally designed and used to monitor liquid levels, such as AdBlue, fuel, lubricants etc., in a sealed tank environment, is first examined. This process validates that the sensor does provide accurate water level information for open water level monitoring tasks. Utilising the dataset collected from eight sensor units, an end-to-end pipeline of automating the data collection, data processing and information extraction processes is proposed. Within the pipeline, a data-driven anomaly detection method that automatically extracts rapid changes in measurement trends at a catchment scale. The lag-time of the test site (Dodder catchment Dublin, Ireland) is also analyzed. Subsequently, the water level response in the catchment due to storm events during the 27 month deployment period is illustrated. To support reproducible and collaborative research, the collected dataset and the source code of this work will be publicly available for research purposes. Full article

A cross-capacitance liquid level sensor is based on the principle of cross capacitance. This study designed a new single-tube cross-capacitance fuel-level sensor. The fuel-level measurement model is established for a single-tube cross-capacitive sensor, and the relationship between the measured liquid level and sensor output capacitance is derived. The characteristics of the sensor were tested experimentally. The experimental results demonstrate that the linearity error of the liquid-level sensor of the single-tube calculation for the spacecraft is ±0.48%, the repeatability error is ±0.47%, and the hysteresis error is ±0.68%. The cross-capacitive fuel-level sensor developed in this study can be used in the fuel tank of spacecrafts owing to its low weight and high precision. Full article

A standard problem in large tanks at oil refineries and petrol stations is that water and fuel usually occupy the same tank. This is undesirable and causes problems such as corrosion in the tanks. Normally, the water level in tanks is unknown, with the problems that this entails. We propose herein a method based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) to detect in real time the interfaces in a tank which can simultaneously contain water, gasoline (or diesel) and air. The plasmonic sensor is composed of a hemispherical glass prism, a magnesium fluoride layer, and a gold layer. We have optimized the structural parameters of the sensor from the theoretical modeling of the reflectance curve. The sensor detects water-fuel and fuel-air interfaces and measures the level of each liquid in real time. This sensor is recommended for inflammable liquids because inside the tank there are no electrical or electronic signals which could cause explosions. The sensor proposed has a sensitivity of between 1.2 and 3.5 RIU⁻¹ and a resolution of between 5.7 × 10⁻⁴ and 16.5 × 10⁻⁴ RIU. Full article