Druck Aerospace Applications

Auxiliary Power Unit

The Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) provides essential functionality to the aircraft, providing, electrical power, pneumatic or hydraulic to start the engines, whilst also providing lighting, air conditioning and water pressure to the main cabin crew and passengers, when grounded. It also plays a critical role in the event of an engine failure, by providing the power to restart the engine(s) during flight. The Druck pressure sensors measure the critical parameters to ensure these systems operate safely and efficiently, whilst also ensuring ground filtration checks can be completed to allow take off.

Challenges:

The APU needs to operate reliably when called upon, even in extreme temperature conditions. This could be when the aircraft is being boarded, in locations that regularly reach temperatures > 40 degrees celsius or indeed at extreme cold temperatures, as low as -56.5 degrees celsius, when in an unlikely event such as an engine failure has occurred and power is required to re-start the engine. These harsh environments, which cannot support human life, need to operate to sustain life when called upon. Additionally, accurate pressure sensors are necessary at low pressures to ensure that filters are not blocked prior to take off, which would result in an AOG event, resulting in high costs and unplanned removals.

Solutions:

Our team offer many years of experience, ensuring that products undergo a robust qualification testing program. We have field proven reliability data from products in service today on the world’s most produced commercial airframes. We have supplied products of varying complexity, which included a triple sensor configuration, offering redundancy during operation, in turn providing a cost effective and reliable solution to our customer.