Safer wiring for aircraft on the horizon
The aviation industry is constantly seeking to upgrade safety of aircraft, including electrical systems. Traditionally, in safety analyses of electrical wired interconnected systems (EWIS), failures are treated as basic events that end up in the bottom of system fault trees. As modern aircraft depends on advanced electrical systems and computers, the reliability of wiring, power feeder cables, connectors, and circuit protection devices is pivotal to safety. Against this backdrop the EU-funded EWIS SAT (Safety analysis tools for electrical wired interconnected systems) project developed a comprehensive safety platform that conducts automated safety studies on EWIS in aircraft. In more technical terms, it successfully developed a safety platform to read and obtain accurate information from electrical designs, offering as well comprehensive tools to define safety components in the EWIS safety database. The system is capable of conducting ongoing safety analyses, displaying fault trees, conducting zonal safety analyses, and exporting results in useful formats. Among a myriad of useful analyses, it can also perform electrical route segregation verifications, harness redundancy verifications and zonal redundancy verifications. With wiring considered vital to aircraft systems, aviation authorities recommend that EWIS be positioned as an important separate system on par with hydraulic, pneumatic, structural, and other systems. In this vein, EWIS SAT has created a specific tool that enables designers to perform multiple safety analyses automatically based on a powerful safety database and improve aircraft safety. The project team demonstrated these revolutionary new tools at the Paris Air Show. It disseminated the results through conferences and the media, eliciting strong interest from aviation stakeholders. Importantly, the tool can help airlines and air companies prepare safety certifications and documents that validate airworthiness to the required authorities. Lastly, the rail and energy industries have also come in contact with the project team as the results can benefit these sectors as well. The project’s outcomes ultimately bode well for the transport safety both in the air and on land.
Keywords
Aircraft, EWIS SAT, electrical, wiring, safety, aviation
