Source: Science and Technology Daily
Science and Technology Daily reporter Ye Qing
On January 24, the domestic passenger aircraft ARJ21 completed the test flight of the high-altitude airport at Tarkushkan Airport at an altitude of 3,258 meters at the westernmost airport of the mainland and the highest civil airport in Xinjiang. The on-site test flight of the passenger aircraft fully verified the effectiveness and breakthrough of the mainland's high-altitude aviation operation technology, and laid a solid foundation for opening up more high-altitude routes in the future.
ARJ21 landed at Tarkushkan Airport to complete the first leg of the test flight. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
A high plateau airport is an airport with an altitude of 2,483 meters (8,000 feet) and above. The mainland is a major civil aviation country with the largest number of high plateau airports, accounting for more than 50% of the world's total, and the six highest altitude airports in the world are all in the mainland. Compared with ordinary airports, high plateau airports have problems such as high altitude, miscellaneous meteorology, and difficult verification, poor operating environment, and significantly reduced safety margin, which is a huge challenge to improve the high altitude operation capability of domestic passenger aircraft.
In terms of high-altitude operation and verification, European and American manufacturers lack verification technology due to lack of relevant development needs, and domestic airlines can only rely on practical experience and conservative operation to meet the safety requirements of high-altitude operation. The number of passengers carried by domestic airlines has dropped by 30%, and they are facing the dilemma of poor economics and technical shortcomings. It is difficult to verify special scenarios, it is difficult to construct a geographical environment, the risk of special flight test is high, and it is difficult to reproduce special scenes, which has become a hurdle for the operation of high plateaus.
Based on this, China Southern Airlines Group, Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, Tencent, Civil Aviation Flight University of China, China Academy of Civil Aviation Science and Technology and other units jointly launched the "Key Technologies and Applications of High Altitude Operation and Verification of Domestic Passenger Aircraft" project, breaking through the difficulties of limited take-off and landing capabilities, limited environmental prediction, and limited verification scenarios, overcoming the key technologies of domestic passenger aircraft high altitude operation, filling the gaps in the technical system, and operating in high plateau capabilities, Three major technological innovations have been achieved in the equipment and operation technology system and the prediction and construction technology of complex scenarios.
China Southern Airlines Group has developed its own full-motion flight simulator. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
According to reports, the project has broken through the key technology of improving the high plateau operation capacity of domestic passenger aircraft for the first time, which can reduce the crew handling load by 50%, increase take-off lift by 2.2%, and shorten the take-off distance by 167 meters. The first high-efficiency protection mechanism for icing in China also reduces the difficulty of passenger aircraft take-off, landing and approach.
The project has built a comprehensive verification equipment and operation technology system for man-machine-environment in the high plateau, and provided a Chinese model for the international high plateau operation standard. The first autonomous and controllable full-motion simulator and the simulator's special operating system not only improve the efficiency of model construction by 1.5 times, but also realize the autonomous and controllable investigation of major accidents and air crashes, and on this basis, build a high plateau operation standard and training system with Chinese characteristics.
On an international scale, the project pioneered the prediction and construction technology of complex scenes on high plateaus. Among them, the real-time flight turbulence prediction system can effectively deal with the problems of turbulence and frequent accidents. Flight data modeling and reverse drive verification technology also overcome the problems of flight turbulence and the recurrence of ground proximity warnings. The project invented a high-level flight simulator special vision engine, which can solve problems such as aircraft proximity warning terrain visualization.
Among them, one of the key technological breakthroughs of the project, the high-level flight simulator special vision, which was jointly developed by China Southern Airlines Group and Tencent based on the self-developed game engine, the visual system has made important breakthroughs in key technical points such as rendering pipelines, programmatic generation tools, and high-resolution visual projection, and has independently built a visualization technology for complex terrain environments.
The picture shows the complex terrain effect of the high plateau rendered by the visual engine. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
The project of "Key Technologies and Applications for the Design and Verification of High Plateaus of Domestic Passenger Aircraft" was evaluated by an expert team composed of 8 academicians and was considered to be "the overall technology has reached the international advanced level, and some of them are internationally leading". In the past three years, the project has directly created economic benefits of 5.7 billion yuan.
On the same day, a seminar on high plateau operation and verification technology was held in Kuqa, Xinjiang.