Page 37 - ConnectorSupplier.com 2019 How-to-Specify E-Book
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Three Things to Consider When Choosing Connectors for Critical Mil/Aero Applications
Claude Chiffard, Global Product Line Leader; Hakan Tezgurler and Maxime Serasset, Custom Solution Managers; and Nataliya Mayaki, Brand Manager at Nicomatic
Today’s connector manufacturers are constantly developing lots of new solutions to satisfy various and ever more challenging application demands, including rugged environmental resistance, high-data-rate transmission, long lifecycles, high reliability performance, and significant space and weight savings. Some considerations, like operating conditions and standards compliance, are a given for any device designer, but especially those developing high-reliability, harsh-environment military, defense, and aerospace applications.
Three things that developers in these uniquely challenging markets should consider to ensure successful connector selections and meet the latest application demands — beyond the several standard boilerplate characteristics — are modularity, signal integrity, and trusted partnerships. Modular connector designs can help satisfy demands for miniaturization, lightweighting, and high electrical performance, while focusing on the signal integrity of connector designs can help satisfy increasingly common demands for high-reliability, high-data-rate transmission. In addition, since connector solutions for military and aerospace applications have to meet strict industry standards — such as MIL-DTL-55302, MIL-DTL-83513, and EN 4165 — deliver high-reliability performance in a wide range of harsh-environment conditions, and address application-specific demands like miniaturization, lightweighting, and signal and data transmission, trusted partnerships with experienced connector suppliers can help keep costs down, achieve more first-pass design successes, and hasten the development cycle by leveraging existing designs for custom solutions and addressing multiple design criteria at the same time to ensure interoperability.
Modularity
The challenge to reduce system and component weight is imperative in airborne systems, as each kilogram represents more than €5,000 for system users in the air. Aircraft designers continually struggle to reduce weight in an effort to increase payload and/or improve flight time, and when it comes to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) and satellites, the size and weight challenges become even more critical.
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