Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe
General Flight Cancelled / Delayed; General Work Refused
Aircraft
I was the Captain and pilot flying. Very shortly after liftoff on an RNAV departure; my Navigational Display went blank and various other indications on my PFD and the Upper DU (Display Unit) intermittently blanked and reappeared. Whenever my flight instruments blanked; the entire Fuel Quantity display 'box' on the Upper DU also blanked; and we got an amber Display Source in the lower left corner of my PFD. This cycling occurred fairly frequently during the first 14;000 feet of climb and much less frequently during the latter portions of the climbout. Sometimes the instruments were blank for a longer period of time; and other times they cycled repeatedly for very short periods of time. We were also in light to moderate turbulence during the majority of the departure and climbout to FL300; for what that's worth. My Flight Director briefly drove out of view once and returned maybe 10 seconds later; and the autopilot clicked off once. The First Officer (Pilot Monitoring) completed the QRH non-normal checklist for Display Source. As I recall; the instruments did not blank at all during our short time in cruise; but in the descent; they started cycling and blanking again. The closer we got to the ground; the more often they tended to blank. We had frequent blanking and cycling on downwind and on the approach.I wrote it up on the ground. It was [previously] written up with a sign off of 'Removed and Replaced #1 DEU;' and it was written up [a few days later] with a sign off of 'Reset DEU-1 Software.' In response to our writeup; maintenance ran several tests; but all tests were normal. [Maintenance] also reseated something down below; but could find no obvious cause for our problem. Due to no known cause for a known recurring problem with our non-deferrable flight instruments; I refused the aircraft for the next leg.
B737-800 Captain reported refusing to accept an aircraft after experiencing autoflight display anomalies that had occurred at least twice in the recent past.