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Monday, July 10, 2006
Sandia Labs Finds Way To Zap Short Circuits
By John Fleck
Copyright © 2006 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writer
A team of Albuquerque scientists has developed a new way to find hidden short circuits in airplane wiring.
Such shorts can cause simple problems, like flickering lights in an airplane's cabin. In rare cases, they have caused crashes. But in a plane's miles of hidden wiring, they are maddeningly difficult to find until it is too late.
A group of Sandia National Laboratories scientists, schooled in the problem of protecting nuclear and other high-risk facilities, realized a quick zap of electricity could safely suss out the faults before they caused a serious problem, according to Larry Schneider, one of the leaders of the research team.
The spark is much like the one that jumps from your hand to a door handle when you walk across a carpet on a dry day— enough to be noticeable but not to cause any damage.
Sandia has signed a deal with Astronics Advanced Electronic Systems of Redmond, Wash., to market the invention.
The discovery grew out of Sandia's work at a hangar on the western edge of Albuquerque's airport, according to Schneider. The Airworthiness Assurance Nondestructive Inspection Validation Center was set up in the early 1990s to help the Federal Aviation Administration develop ways to test aging aircraft for problems.
Sandia's involvement in the project began when researchers at the center set up a testbed to help the FAA look at the various technologies being developed to hunt down aircraft wiring problems.
When they realized the existing technologies did not work very well, Sandia scientists suggested a solution of their own, according to Schneider.
Sandia has long worked with extremely short-duration, high voltage pulses. Schneider and his colleagues realized that could be the key to finding hidden shorts in a plane's wiring.
The duration of the pulse is so short that it does not damage the plane's wiring. But the voltage is high enough that it can cause a short in a dangerously frayed wire.
The technology's developers say that, combined with test equipment developed by Astronics, repair crews will be able to pin down the location of the short to within inches.
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