Digital fuel quantity measurement technology developed by power management company Eaton is a revolutionary step ahead in aircraft fuel gauging and will be featured on the all-new family of G500 and G600 business jets recently announced by Gulfstream Aerospace Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics. In addition to delivering superior accuracy, Eaton's digital technology significantly improves reliability, safety and weight savings and is an affordable retrofit solution to update analog systems.

"Eaton continues to build on our extensive fuel systems expertise by introducing next-generation fuel gauging technology to the aerospace industry," said Jay Iyengar, vice president of engineering and technology for Eaton's Aerospace Group. "Eaton's digital solution also gives our military and commercial customers a cost-effective option to modernize aging fleets and help them comply with new industry standards and requirements."

Eaton's digital fuel quantity measurement technology is up to 40 percent lighter than similar analog systems and has been verified to eliminate many analog-related errors. It also meets the Federal Aviation Administration's latest fuel-safety requirements.

More precise fuel-quantity readings reduce the need to carry large volumes of extra fuel to cover for the inaccuracies of analog systems. Less fuel means less weight, which in turn improves fuel efficiency, lowers fuel costs and reduces carbon emissions. Eaton's digital technology incorporates an integrated capacitance-to-digital converter chip equipped with a built-in temperature sensing and contamination resistance measurement. The chip eliminates the need for separate capacitance measurement circuitry, and temperature sensing helps adjust for variations of dielectric strength and density throughout the fuel tank. Providing capacitance measurement circuitry at the probe eliminates many failure modes that cause misleading signals common to analog output signals.

In addition, Eaton's design team provides hardware-in-the-loop fuel tank and probe emulators so customers can "fly" virtual prototypes of fuel-gauging systems. The availability of emulators helps customers reduce program risk at the overall aircraft development level and gain confidence in product performance.