Diagnosis System for the A320 Under Development at MBB

One research and development objective at the MBB Hamburg plant is to find a means of detecting faults sufficiently early, long before any harm is done to aircraft systems or any damage caused. The use of micro‐processors in electronic systems has made it possible to pass digital signals from one system to another, to combine signals, store them in computers and recall them. This has helped design engineers to find a safe way of trouble‐shooting in aircraft: the “network” of digital electronics installed in the A310 and the future A320 can be used to detect faults. This will mean that the process of fault finding and identification is carried out almost entirely “piggy‐back” on electronic data routes which already exist.