Patent ID: 6957582

Claim:
An aircraft ultrasonic system for fuel gauging and battle damage detection of an aircraft, said system comprising: at least one ultrasonic transducer disposed at a fuel tank of the aircraft; a first circuit for exciting said at least one ultrasonic transducer to transmit an acoustic pulse toward a surface of fuel in said tank, said at least one ultrasonic transducer operative to receive acoustic echo pulses reflected from the fuel surface and convert said acoustic echo pulses to electrical echo pulses, said at least one ultrasonic transducer also operative to receive acoustic compression wavefront pulses impinging thereon and convert said acoustic compression wavefront pulses to electrical compression wavefront pulses; and a second circuit for receiving and processing said electrical echo and compression wavefront pulses from said at least one ultrasonic transducer, said second circuit operative to perform fuel quantity measurements using said electrical echo pulses and to perform battle damage detection using said electrical compression wavefront pulses.