Can a plane’s black box be destroyed in a crash?
When a plane crashes, after confirming the number of casualties, people will keep an eye on the black box that records all the data related to the flight. Storing the plane’s parameters right before the time of the crash as well as the last words sent by the crew to each other, the important dark box often hides for days before being found.
In fact, “black box” is just a name that is widely used, but the appearance of the box is not black at all. The black box is usually located in the tail of the plane, which is the location for the black box with the highest survival rate.
The black box’s yellow-orange appearance separates it from the rest of the wreckage.
An aircraft typically has up to two black boxes: one that stores flight data such as speed or altitude, and the other that stores specific information such as engine performance, flight control procedures, and communications between aircraft. pilot in the cockpit. According to the regulations, each black box must contain at least 25 hours of flight data, in addition to 2 hours of conversations between crew members in the cockpit.
They are a repository of data that helps investigators piece together the events that preceded the crash, see if pilots recognized signs of an impending crash, and tried to correct it.
Black box design
To protect the circuit boards that store information, the black box is wrapped in a thin layer of aluminum, then placed in a layer of insulation about 2.5cm thick. The entire structure is then placed into a corrosion-resistant container, made from stainless steel or titanium.
Basically, the black box is almost immune to impact from impact, resistant to fire and water.
During the test, the black box had to withstand an acceleration of 3,400 G*, which is equivalent to the impact of an object flying at 500 km/h. It also has to withstand heat of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius for an hour.
*About 3,400 times Earth’s gravitational acceleration of 9.81 m/s; and humans can only bear up to the limit of 9 m/s.
The resistant design doesn’t just protect the data storage board. Inside the black box is also a signal generator with the ability to broadcast once per second, operating at a depth of 6,000 meters for 30 days. The waves of the black box can reach a radius of 24 km, but many times, that is not enough for the search team to easily locate the black box. Furthermore, the transmitter can be damaged in the event of an extreme impact.
Can the black box be destroyed?
According to Scott Hamilton, director of aviation consulting firm Leeham Co., the destruction of the black box “is extremely rare”. With many years of experience working in the aviation industry, he believes that the black box performance is much more effective than it looks. He does not recall any accidents that saw both black boxes destroyed, to the point where data could not be collected.
However, there are still bad cases that have happened. The search team was unable to locate the black box, and investigators may have obtained flight data, but the circuit board containing the pilot’s conversations melted before the enormous heat of the fire.
There have been many suggestions that the black box should transmit data to another storage device, but the airline has not yet announced that it will apply the technology already available to its planes.
at Blogtuan.info – Source: genk.vn – Read the original article here
