Standards Development

Scope

This part of 81346 International Standard, published jointly by IEC and ISO, provides, in combination with IEC 81346-1 and IEC 81346-2, rules and recommendations on the structuring of systems and the information on systems in area of technical products and equipment of civil aircrafts. It also provides classification scheme of infrastructure objects in such a system for use in function- product- location- and type-specific reference designations of technical products and their documentation for aircraft systems.

The structuring principles and the classes of infrastructure objects are intended to provide a clear identification and localization of the technical systems, and for use in their labelling in models of an aircraft, for their designation in technical documents, for the designation of the technical documents and labelling of installed products as well.

This document encompasses the process of design, planning, processing, and maintaining of civil aircrafts. The specifications in this document apply for aircrafts, defined as “any vehicle that can fly and carry goods or passengers (payload)”. Besides the prime systems defined characterising an aircraft, this NP also includes auxiliary systems to support these s ystems such as communication systems, shaping systems, navigating systems, electrical systems, network systems, water systems, fit-out systems, management systems etc.

This document is, according to the basic rules defined in IEC 81346-1, not applicable for designations related to product individuals (e.g., inventory number, serial number) or the designation of object types and classes of products (e.g., article number or parts number)

Purpose

General

This standard considers and supports the planning, design, utilization and maintenance of aircraft systems. The application of Reference Designation System (RDS) may lead to restructuring and reorientation of these activities. It offers however chances and potentials of increasing efficiency and economization. Advantages of designation systems, which will be more and more important in the future are:

- The reference designation system can be applied in several technical fields in the same way and is not designed only for one. Aeronautics, mechanical, electrical and process equipment can be treated the same way which is a basis for companywide synergy effects.

- The reference designation system allows integrating any kind of systems and components without changing the once defined designations.

- The reference designation is not bound to a fixed structural pattern. Thus, the designation system is expandible, which makes the interpretability in some cases quite complex. Therefore, an exact and computer interpretable documentation and description is essential.

- The application of different aspects allows, for instance, the designation of functions independently from realizing products and their location.

- The different representation of systems through multiple aspects and the relations between these, allows for a more inclusive and complete reference model of systems.

This standard will build upon the already well-established classification structure, following the same principles in other industries, for example as defined in ISO 81346-10 and the current work with IEC 81346- 14 on which the attached proposal is based. This will ensure a common language and thereby readability of reference designations for users across the power supply, manufacturing industry and aircraft industry.

Rationale The ISO/IEC 81346 standard series (known as “RDS” for Reference Designation System) provides the rules and tables for creating a reference model for systems, which is a naming convention for systems used so anyone (humans, tools, documents etc.) can refer to the same object in an unambiguous manner from anywhere, across any platform.

The basic principles RDS 81346 originates from electrical engineering back in the 1970ties and has been under constant development since then. The purpose has always been referencing between documentation and the “real world”. In 1996 ISO joined the standard series with the aim to create a “common language” for engineering designs. With the addition of 81346 part 12 (originates from 2014 but finalized and approved in 2018) for systems applied in construction works (RDS-CW), the template for future additions of other industries in the standard series was given. Very quickly, other industries showed up and expressed their interest in the expansion, but for specific parts tailored for their industry. This is how 81346 part 10 for Power Systems (RDS-PS) came alive and is now applied in the energy sector.