Chievres Fire Fighters 424th Squadron Turkish Airbus A400M exercise 180712-A-HZ738-0001

An electronic centralised aircraft monitoring (ECAM) or electronic centralized aircraft monitoring is a system on Airbus aircraft that monitor aircraft functions and relays them to the pilots. It also produces messages detailing failures and in certain cases, lists procedures to undertake to correct the problem.

History

ECAM is similar to other systems, known as Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System (EICAS), used by

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

, Bombardier, COMAC, Dornier,

Embraer Embraer S.A. () is a Brazilian multinational aerospace corporation. It develops and manufactures aircraft and aviation systems, and provides leasing, equipment, and technical support services. Embraer is the third largest producer of civil air ...

, Saab, and

Xi'an Xi'an is the list of capitals in China, capital of the Chinese province of Shaanxi. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong plain, the city is the third-most populous city in Western China after Chongqing and Chengdu, as well as the most populou ...

, ''Centralized Fault Detection System'' (CFDS) on

McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas Corporation was a major American Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor, formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own ...

, or ''Engine Warning Display'' (EWD) on ATR, which display data concerning aircraft systems and also failures.

Airbus Airbus SE ( ; ; ; ) is a Pan-European aerospace corporation. The company's primary business is the design and manufacturing of commercial aircraft but it also has separate Airbus Defence and Space, defence and space and Airbus Helicopters, he ...

developed ECAM, such that it not only provided the features of EICAS, but also displayed corrective action to be taken by the pilot, as well as system limitations after the failures. Using a colour-coded scheme the pilots can instantly assess the situation and decide on the actions to be taken. It was designed to ease pilot stress in abnormal and emergency situations, by designing a paperless

cockpit A cockpit or flight deck is the area, on the front part of an aircraft, spacecraft, or submersible, from which a pilot controls the vehicle. The cockpit of an aircraft contains flight instruments on an instrument panel, and the controls th ...

in which all the procedures are instantly available.

System design

ECAM is a series of systems designed to work in unison to display information to the pilots in a quick and effective manner.

Sensor A sensor is often defined as a device that receives and responds to a signal or stimulus. The stimulus is the quantity, property, or condition that is sensed and converted into electrical signal. In the broadest definition, a sensor is a devi ...

s placed throughout the aircraft, monitoring key parameters, feed their data into two System Data Acquisition Concentrator (SDACs) which in turn process the data and feed it to two Flight Warning Computers (FWCs). The FWCs check for discrepancies in the data and then display the data on the ECAM displays through the three Display Management Computers (DMCs). In the event of a fault the FWCs generate the appropriate warning messages and sounds. More vital systems are routed directly through the FWCs such that failures in them can still be detected even with the loss of both SDACs. The whole system can continue to operate even with a failure of one SDAC and one FWC. Failures are classed by importance ranging from level 1 failures to level 3 failures. In the event of simultaneous failures the most critical failure is displayed first. The warning hierarchy is as follows: * Level 3 Failures: red warnings, situations that require immediate crew action and that place the flight in danger. For example, an engine fire or loss of cabin pressure. They are enunciated with a red master warning light, a warning (red) ECAM message and a continuous repetitive chime or a specific sound or a synthetic voice. The chime can be silenced by pressing the master warning push button. * Level 2 Failures: amber cautions, failures that require crew attention but not immediate action. For example, air bleed failure or fuel fault. They have no direct consequence to flight safety and are shown to the crew through an amber master caution light, a caution (amber) ECAM message and a single chime. * Level 1 Failures: Cautions, failures and faults that lead to a loss of system redundancy, they require monitoring but present no hazard. Examples include the loss of DMC3 when not in use. Level 1 failures are enunciated by a caution (amber) ECAM message only (no aural warning). In addition to the three failure levels are following status messages: * Advisory: System parameters' monitoring. It causes an automatic call of the relevant system page on the system display (S/D). The affected parameter pulses green. * MEMO: Information: Recalls normal or automatic selection of functions which are temporarily used. It causes a green, amber, or magenta message on engine warning display (E/WD).

Alternative systems

Some alternatives are: * Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System (EICAS) on

, Bombardier, Dornier,

and Saab * ''Centralized Fault Detection System'' (CFDS) on

* ''Flight Warning System'' (FWS) on

Fokker Fokker (; ) was a Dutch aircraft manufacturer that operated from 1912 to 1996. The company was founded by the Dutch aviator Anthony Fokker and became famous during World War I for its fighter aircraft. During its most successful period in the 19 ...

* ''Engine Warning Display'' (EWD) on ATR * ''Комплексная система экранной индикации и сигнализации'' (КСЭИС) on

Antonov Antonov (d/b/a Antonov Company, formerly the Aeronautical Scientific-Technical Complex named after Antonov or Antonov ASTC, and earlier the Antonov Design Bureau, for its chief designer, Oleg Antonov) is a Ukrainian aircraft manufacturing and ...

Presence

Airbus-developed jetliners have ECAM since the A300-600 and A310. The

Airbus A220 The Airbus A220 is a family of five-abreast narrow-body airliners by Airbus Canada Limited Partnership (ACLP). It was originally developed by Bombardier Aviation and had two years in service as the Bombardier CSeries. The program was launche ...

has EICAS, as it was originally a Bombardier product.

Limitations

The Qantas Flight 32 engine failure generated more than 80 ECAM alerts, whose treatment took over an hour to complete.https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20180003389/downloads/20180003389.pdf The A350 and A380 are the only Airbus-developed jetliners with fully integrated checklists.

References