Detecting and Extinguishing of Arcs in Aircraft Electrical Systems

Arcing conditions in aircraft electrical systems, in cable insulations that contain polyimid may cause explosive burning of the sheathed cable and surrounding materials due to the chemical structure of this insulation material. Alternating current arcs exhibit a typical gap of the current flow. Test procedures have been established and they are the platform upon which existing and future developments and standards for arc fault detectors will be based. First generation devices detect arcs only upon their appearance because of their characteristic features whether in the time- and/or frequency domain. The biggest challenge is to differentiate between “normal” interference signals and arcs and to meet the desired critical physical dimensions. An ideal solution would be to detect failures of insulation defects prior to the appearance of an energetic arc and at the same time identifying the location of the fault.