Design and testing of heliport approach light in compliance with civil aviation rules

ABSTRACT Incandescent lamps have dominated the lighting market for well over 150 years. However, recent times have seen a steady decline in their sale owing to the popularity of more compact and efficient LEDs. The high demand for LEDs can be owed to the fact that, they consume only 10% of the power required for incandescent bulbs and produce approximately no heat (1W) when compared to 25W produced by their counterpart. The initial cost of the LED is higher than incandescent but in the long run the savings can be recouped, as the need for maintenance is remarkably reduced owing to its long life of 60000hrs. Also they are highly directional, so are better suited in the situations where the area needs to be highlighted for increased visibility. On the account of the advantages mentioned above, the airfield lighting also has been shifting focus from incandescent and halogens to LED power source. Companies have been producing non-LED luminaires for quite a long time now. Therefore, switching to LED source required remapping of the old luminaire pattern, based on the altered aviation standards better suited to the LED version. The following study is exclusively centred on heliport approach light used to indicate the preferred approach direction through a densely populated area with low visibility of approach route. Since LED lights are more directional, they serve the purpose of highlighting the approach better than incandescent lights. The design of the luminaire was executed using Autodesk® Inventor® and the calculations were done on Microsoft® Excel. The design process included benchmarking of the old incandescent light structure and the boundaries set by the aviation standards. The fundamental factors that influenced the structure design were the orientation of LED-lens assembly for required luminous intensity, topography of the area where the luminaire is to be installed, environmental factors, material properties and ease of availability and above all, customer requirements. The biggest challenge was to come up with a product which was cost effective and at the same time maintain a superior quality, to be able to compete with similar products from other manufacturers. The design was kept simplistic to ease the process of assembly and maintenance, besides lowering the manufacturing cost. To save weight and avoid corrosion, major components which were continuously exposed to sunlight and rain, were cast from aluminium. The cover encasing the optics was decided to be made by thermoforming polycarbonate sheets for the same reason. The design of the structure has been finalised and sent for sample production. The test to affirm compliance with the standards will be run once the assembly is completed. Modifications will be made as per requirement if certain regulations are not met.