Wiring System In-Situ Health Monitoring Diagnostics

Aging aircraft wiring has been identified as an area of critical national concern, due to safety problems, maintenance expense, and lost mission capable time. The objective of this proposal is to create and deploy a wire fault location system for aging aircraft utilizing spread spectrum sensing methods. This project will develop a Wiring In Line Maintenance Aid (WILMA) that can be used for in line measurements when the aircraft is on the ground. This new system is different from virtually all other ground support wiring maintenance tools, because it can be used to locate intermittent faults on powered systems, running live. It can also be used to assess the accuracy of wiring maintenance and modifications. In addition to providing a significant new ground support tool, the development of a WILMA is a critical step forward in the development of electronics for an on board Smart Connector that can be used to locate faults in real time on aircraft in flight. The spread spectrum technology has been demonstrated for accurate fault location (to within a few centimeters on ideal cables, and 1-2 feet on non-ideal cables) for realistic aircraft wires carrying both DC and AC power or digital data signals.