Integrated Fire and Overheat Detection System.

摘要

This report describes the background, specifications, design, development, construction and evaluation of an airborne integrated fire and overheat warning system known as the IFOS. It was built to illustrate the possibility of providing fire and overheat detection capability with a high degree of reliability. The IFOS consists of six ultraviolet flame detector heads, two overheatsensing thermistor cables, a central computer unit, a crew readout unit to indicate fire and overheat conditions, a maintenance warning unit to indicate component failure. The system is self-testing to an important degree and completely automatic in operation. Three such systems were constructed and extensively tested. Tests included operation under various conditions of input voltage, temperature and altitude. Response times to fire and overheat conditions were measured, and one system was subjected to vibration, shock, humidity, salt spray and electromagnetic interference tests. In addition, a theoretical study of reliability was made. While the above tests uncovered a number of design weaknesses, all of these defects could be overcome in designing an improved model of the IFOS. It is concluded that a high reliability, automatic fire and overheat detection system is definitely feasible. (Author)