Flight recorder: where is it, what does it look like, why is it needed?

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

From TV screens, when the next plane crash occurs, we often hear about the search for the black box. Have you ever wondered why it's called that? The paradox is that this is not a box at all, and it is not black at all … In fact, this device is called a flight recorder.

What does a flight recorder look like?

Let's see what appearance he has. The flight recorder is usually bright orange or red. It doesn't look like a box either. Since it usually has a round or oval shape. "Why?" - you ask. The explanation is simple. When an aircraft crashes, rounded bodies will be better able to withstand external influences. By the way, the bright colors make it easier to find him after a plane crash.

In the language of professional aviators, a black box is called an emergency flight data recording system. And in short - just SARPP.

Flight Recorder Unit

The recorder itself is a simple device. It contains manysensors, storage units, signal processing units. Chips and controllers are not very different from those found in our laptops. But the so-called flash memory is used in recorders recently. Many aircraft currently flying are equipped with older models. In them, the recording takes place on a magnetic tape, as in old tape recorders, or on a wire. Of course, the wire is much stronger than the tape, and therefore more reliable.

To better protect all these parts, they are placed in a completely sealed case. It is made of titanium or high-strength steel. Inside there is a serious layer of thermal insulation. There are special standards that flight recorders must meet, because data will be stored in conditions of high overloads, in fire and in water. It is not known where the device may end up after a plane crash, and therefore must withstand absolutely all tests.

How are recorders looking for?

Really, how do you find a flight recorder in the water? After all, it can be a small lake, and the sea, and even the ocean. It turns out that black boxes are equipped with special ultrasonic beacons that turn on at the moment of contact with water. The beacon emits a signal at a frequency of 37,500 Hz. When these sounds are bearing, it is no longer difficult to find the box itself. Divers or special robots lift it out of the water when the depth is very deep.

As for searching on the ground, it's even easier. Knowing the crash site of the airliner, the recorders are searching nearby, inspecting the area around.

A trip to history

What do you think, and who invented the first recorder? It is believed that a similar device was invented by David Warren, an Australian scientist. In 1953, the first passenger jet plane "Kometa-1" crashed. No one survived this plane crash, and there were no witnesses to the tragedy, which means that there was no need to talk about the causes of the crash. David worked on the team that investigated the fall. He came up with the idea that they could be very helpful to record the conversations of the pilots, as well as the readings of the instruments at the time of the fall. Then it would be possible to establish the causes of the crash of the liner.

In 1957, David, together with his colleagues, in Melbourne, in the laboratory of aeronautics, created a black box model. The device recorded all the necessary information and conversations of the pilots for four hours in a row. A year later, the scientist went to England to further improve his offspring. The new invention was placed in a shockproof and fireproof box. It began to be actively sold to many countries of the world.

In 1960, there was a plane crash in Australia in the state of Queensland. After it, the country's government ordered all airlines to install recorders on board. In fact, Australia became the first country in the world to pass such a law.

Currently, a flight recorder is a mandatory device on any aircraft. It helps to identify the causes of disasters and prevent new possibletragedy.

And the very name "black box" was given to the device because its very first copies were forbidden to be serviced by technical workers. Its internal structure and principle of operation were strictly classified. And this was done by airlines to ensure maximum objectivity in the investigation of air crashes. Such is the history of the first recorders.

Modern recorders

Modern flight recorders are already more advanced and very different from their forefathers. Inside them are protected on-board drives (ZBN). As a rule, now two such ZBNs are installed on airliners, one of which records the flight parameters, and the second - all the crew's negotiations. But there are other options. On some airliners, data can be recorded on both two and three ZBNs. This is done for insurance purposes. In the event that one collapses, the other will surely survive.

In order to protect data in a disaster, the hollow parts of the black box are filled with a special powder that can withstand the temperature of burning jet fuel. Thanks to him, the temperature inside the recorder does not rise more than one hundred and sixty degrees. This allows you to save all the information that is inside. As for military aircraft, they are no different from civilian ones. True, they still record parameters regarding working with weapons.

Where are the flight recorders on the plane?

Black boxes are usually located in the rear fuselage of aircraft. According to statistics, thisthe area is least likely to be damaged in accidents, because the main blow usually falls on the bow. As we have already said, there are several recorders on board airliners. It just so happened in aviation that all systems are backed up. So it is more likely that at least one of the black boxes will survive, and the information from the flight recorders will be decrypted.

Types of flight recorders

By the way, this equipment also differs in the method of recording information, which allows you to get more accurate results. There are two types of flight recorders, more precisely, their types: speech and parametric. What are their features and differences?

The flight recorder recording of the first type (voice) saves not only the conversations of the crew members and controllers, but also all the surrounding sounds during the last two hours. As for parametric ones, they write data from different sensors. All parameters are recorded several times per second, with rapid changes, the frequency of information recording increases, and the time varies from seventeen to twenty-five hours. This means that the flight recorder record will cover the duration of any flight.

Parametric and speech devices can be combined into one, but in any case, all records are made in time. Parametric devices do not record all flight data, but only those that can be useful in the investigation of the accident.

Complete information about everything that happens on board the aircraft is written by operational instruments. It is their data that is used to analyze the behavior of pilots, aircraft repair and maintenance. They are not protected by anything, and thereforeinterpretation of this type of flight recorders is not possible.

What data is recorded by flight recorders

Black boxes record many parameters, among which we can highlight:

• technical: hydraulic pressure, engine speed, fuel pressure, temperature, etc.;
• actions of crew members: extension and retraction of takeoff and landing mechanisms, deviation of controls;
• navigation data: flight altitude, speed, passing beacons, etc.

How to interpret black box data?

The media always report that the liner's black box data will be decrypted. And is it really so? Deciphering flight recorders is as much of a myth as black boxes.

We would like to note that the information is not subject to any encryption. This word is not even appropriate here. Journalists, for example, while listening to a dictaphone, write a text. And the commission, consisting of experts, reads information from the carrier, which has a flight recorder of the aircraft, processes it and writes a report in a form convenient for analysis. There is no decryption in this process. Moreover, it is not difficult to remove the data. You can find out what the flight recorders say at any airport. Protection of information from outsiders is not provided. Probably not necessary.

In general, the flight recorder of an aircraft is intended primarily to establish the causes of an air crash in order to warn insimilar situations in the future. Therefore, specialized protection is not needed. If for some reason they want to hide or hush up the true facts (perhaps for political reasons), then you can always refer to the great damage and the inability to read the data of the flight recorders.

Is it always possible to get information?

By the way, statistics show that instrument damage occurs quite often. This is about one in three accidents. However, the information can still be recovered.

Separate fragments of the tape are glued together, then a special composition is applied, and new contacts are soldered to the surviving parts of the microcircuits in order to connect them to the reader. Of course, the process is not easy, it's all done in special laboratories and sometimes takes a lot of time, but still nothing is impossible.

Prospects for the development of recorders

In the modern world, more and more stringent requirements are imposed on recorders. So, they have room to develop. The immediate prospect is to make video recording from different points outside the airliner and inside it. Experts say that this can help move to a new level of equipment, so that the instruments in the cockpit are not arrows, but in the form of a display. Since old boxes tend to, so to speak, freeze during an accident on the last readings, it makes sense to replace them with screens that will not behave this way. However, at present, along with monitors, they still use pointer devices, in case theyrefusal.

In general, it's hard to imagine that until quite recently all aircraft were built and flew without black boxes. During the Great Patriotic War, only the first aircraft appeared, on which several parameters were recorded. The active distribution of recorders started only in the early sixties (both in our and foreign aviation). In the USSR, this issue has been seriously de alt with since 1970. The fact is that at that time it was already forbidden to make international flights without the presence of black boxes.

Instead of afterword

In our article we tried to talk about the mysterious "black box". In today's world, a flight recorder is an integral part of aviation. It is already difficult to imagine that you can somehow do without it. The fact is that it is needed not only to investigate tragedies, but above all, so that a lesson is learned from each air crash, and in the future all necessary measures are taken to prevent possible crashes. By the way, investigation materials are often used in training centers, so to speak, as a simulation of real situations for pilots, because the more experience the crew has in emergency situations, the more likely it will help them in a real flight. Of course, far from everything depends on people, equipment failures are not subject to them, but extra experience, as they say, never hurts.