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Boeing 787 Dreamliner Safety-Critical Systems
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is one of the world’s most advanced aircraft, and it depends on the INTEGRITY-178 high-assurance RTOS for multiple flight-critical systems, including the flight controls, the surveillance system, and the engine monitoring system.
Honeywell selected INTEGRITY-178 for the 787 flight control electronics, which includes the autopilot and the fly-by-wire system. With more than 1.5 million lines software code, Honeywell’s flight control computer is one of the most complex components on the 787 aircraft. The flight control computer interprets signals from the pilot’s yoke and then provides electronic commands to the actuators to move the control surfaces, such as the rudder and elevators. Don Morrow, Honeywell's director of Boeing business development, told Avionics International that “Honeywell chose Green Hills because it provides a DO-178B, Level A, certified time and space partitioned operating system with a tightly coupled development environment.”
Boeing 787 Dreamliner
(Image courtesy Boeing)
Rockwell Collins (now Collins Aerospace) selected INTEGRITY-178 for the 787 integrated surveillance system (ISS), which warns the pilot about traffic, collision avoidance, terrain, and weather. The traffic module includes the transponder and traffic alert collision avoidance system (TCAS).
The Digital System Sciences (DSS) Group of Vibro-Meter selected INTEGRITY-178 for their Vibration and Health Monitoring Systems for the jet engines that are used on the 787, the General Electric GEnx and Rolls Royce Trent 1000. These Engine Monitoring Units are unique in the avionics industry in that they are physically mounted on the engine, where the environments are severe as compared to most avionics environments.
Additional Resources
- Press release (6-Jul-2005):
INTEGRITY Selected for Flight Controls, Surveillance System and Engine Monitoring
