News and Events


ILDAS Critical Design Review passed
On March 26th, 2008 a meeting was organized at Airbus Toulouse for the Critical Design Review Milestone of the ILDAS research project. The Critical Design Review (CDR) is a major milestone in the project, presenting the detailed design.
The meeting was concluded by stating that the level of detail presented and the status of the deliverables regarding the high-level detailed design were sufficient to declare the CDR milestone achieved. Work on the low-level detailed design is continued and should be realized within 3 months.

The meeting was attended by representatives of all 12 partners and the EC Project Officer Mr. Perez-Illana. The ILDAS research project delivers a so-called "concept prototype". This will have all required functionality to prove the concept, not more, not less. After the research project, two industrialization phases are envisaged (Figure 1) starting with flight testing of the system on a test aircraft for actual validation of the in-flight measurement functionality and performance. Application of a system for commercial airliners will be considered after successful flight test results.

Figure 1. Phases after the ILDAS research project

The objective of the CDR was:
- to bring together information about all parts of the system and
- to judge whether the assembly of these parts will form a functioning system
- to enable every partner to implement the individual parts independently.

The status and the progress of all work packages of the project were presented by the work package leaders.

The ILDAS Concept Prototype will be developed in order to verify the sensors, the system concept and to validate it by means of a ground test using an A320 aircraft. The term “concept” has been added in order to clarify that the Prototype is not yet certified. The Concept Prototype consists of an aircraft sub-system and a ground sub-system.
The system Concept Prototype will be used for the ground validation test on an A320; Eurocopter Deutschland will perform a ground test on a helicopter. Figure 2 shows the different subsystems that are part of the ILDAS Concept Prototype on-board and on-ground subsystems.

Figure 2. ILDAS Concept Prototype subsystems

For the Concept Prototype the central data storage and processing unit DADS shall be able to accommodate a number of sensor acquisition channels. A number of sensor types for different applications will be developed. The main sensor consists of a HF and LF magnetic field sensor. A novel method to measure the H-field at the fuselage using an internally mounted window sensor will be evaluated in order to verify if it can replace an external fuselage sensor. A dedicated E-field sensor will be developed, which will be used to trigger the system. Figure 3 shows a breakdown of possible ILDAS sensor types.

Figure 3. ILDAS sensor types

The next important project milestone is the Subsystem Verification Review due for 12 February 2009 (preliminary date) at NLR Amsterdam. At this review the test results of all major subsystems are evaluated.

Participation to ICOLSE - 24/07/2007
A paper written by the ILDAS partners has been submitted to the ICOLSE technical secretary and accepted. Therefore, three oral presentations will take place during the conference (August 28-31), one to give a general overview, one focusing on sensors and the last one focusing on the ElectroMagnetic toolkit.
You can find the paper and its abstract in the "Publication" Section of the website