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The past twenty years have seen tremendous changes in the Avionics display and flight deck lighting due to the application of solid-state LED (light emitting diode) light sources and LCDs (liquid crystal displays). These advances significantly benefit the customer and pilot users when integrated correctly. This paper discusses recommended practices and guidance given in SAE ARP 4103 for modern Avionics flight deck lighting systems to satisfy the end user and obtain certification. SAE ARP 4103 Flight Deck Lighting for Commercial Transport Aircraft has recently been revised to keep up with the Avionics state-of-the-art and add clarification where needed. ARP 4103 contains recommended Avionics flight deck lighting design and performance criteria to ensure prompt and accurate readability and visibility, color identification and discrimination of needed information under all expected ambient lighting and electrical power conditions. For additional details, see the actual ARP 4103.

Current vehicle lighting standards were developed based on the characteristics of incandescent bulbs. The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which those standards and test specifications may be appropriately applied to lamps with light emitting diode (LED) light sources. The paper also explores possible changes to current testing and standards that would improve performance in the field or lower the costs of manufacturing and validating LED lamps. As LED lamps become increasingly common, it is important that our standards and test procedures properly account for the differences in LED and incandescent lamps without penalizing the new technology through the use of inappropriate requirements.

The study described below investigates several factors in the perception of brightness for LED and incandescent lamps. One of those factors is the difference in voltage drop due to the much lower currents needed to energize LED lamps. We found that these voltage drop differences could significantly affect the actual intensity emitted by the lamps. Another factor studied was the effect of the luminance distribution of the lens on the human perception of brightness. A study was done in which volunteers were asked to make a visual comparison of different lamps against a standard. We found that lamps with multiple bright and dark areas, such as LED lamps, were generally perceived to be brighter than a standard incandescent lamp with a more evenly illuminated lens. The effect of the color difference between LED lamps and incandescent lamps was also investigated. We found no statistically significant effect of color with our limited data, but further investigation is needed.