SubscribeA radical new electronics enclosure developed at Aish Technologies has won a prestigious Chairman’s Silver Award for Innovation from BAE Systems.
The Chairman’s Awards scheme recognises BAE Systems employees, colleagues and industry partners for the outstanding new and innovative ways in which they shape BAE Systems and contribute towards its global success.
Over 3500 award nominations in various categories were received from BAE sites across the globe. From these nominations over 1200 bronze awards and 54 silver awards were given. Eighteen nominations, including the Aish Technologies design, went forward to the Gold Awards ceremony, held at Hampton Court Palace in November 2007.
The enclosure, designated the Common Cabinet, was represented at the ceremony by members of the BAE Systems Rainbow Team (shown in the photo below), including Aish Technologies’ Chief Engineer Richard Morgan.
Within the Innovation category, the Common Cabinet was narrowly beaten by two US teams that had developed life saving devices for use in Afghanistan. BAE Systems Chairman Dick Olver personally congratulated the team for their achievement.
In a letter of congratulations to Aish Technologies, Murray Easton, Managing Director BAE Systems Submarine Solutions, said “Many people would expect the design, prototyping and testing of a new cabinet to be a 12 month programme, and to achieve this in only six months shows that a level of commitment above and beyond expectation must have been shown by your team”.
The Common Cabinet has been designed as a replacement for the Naval Equipment Practice (NEP) Cabinet, which is fitted to all current Royal Navy submarines for Sonar, Combat Management and other applications. The new Cabinet provides improved cooling performance, increased electronics card density, superior payload flexibility and easier maintenance at a lower unit cost.
This has been achieved through a number of innovative design ideas, the most radical of which is turning the card rack positions, and hence the airflow, through 90 degrees. The card racks are mounted in pairs in three rows, each row having a separate horizontal closed air/water circulation that eliminates the stovepipe cooling inefficiencies of a conventional vertical layout.
The Common Cabinet has been developed as the generic cabinet for the fourth Astute Class submarine, HMS Audacious, and is destined to deliver cost and performance benefits across all future RN Astute and Successor SSBN boats.
Aish Technologies takes pride in its close relationship with its customers, and is pleased to be part of the BAE Systems Rainbow Team, which has created an environment where the ideas that will make the Common Cabinet such a successful product, and major contributor to the affordability of future submarine programmes, have been fully encouraged.