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As an airplane ages, the many miles of electrical wiring buried deep within its structure begin to crack and fray. Once thought to be rare and benign, such faults are found by the thousands in a typical aircraft. Unlike obvious cracks in a wing or an engine, damaged wiring is extremely difficult to detect. But the resulting electrical faults can be just as deadly: defective wiring has been blamed for the downing of Swissair 111 near Nova Scotia in 1998 and of TWA 800 off New York's Long Island in 1996. Indeed, any deeply wired system is vulnerable--the space shuttle, nuclear power plants, subways and railroads, even the family car.
As wiring safety experts Cynthia Furse and Randy Haupt describe in the February 2001 issue of IEEE Spectrum, much of the problem can be attributed to a popular wire insulating material, known as Kapton. Once touted for its light weight and durability, Kapton was discovered to break down when exposed to an aircraft's moist environment. Though no longer widely used for new aircraft, Kapton wiring can be found on thousands of older vehicles still in service.
Compounding the wiring problem are the frequent failures of standard maintenance practices to detect wiring faults, and even their tendency to damage the wires in the process. Hope may be in sight, though: emerging technologies include automated maintenance techniques that remove much of the guesswork and intrusiveness of current methods; and "smart" wiring systems with embedded electronics for continuous, in-flight monitoring and fault correction.
Contact: Jean Kumagai, 212 419-7551, [email protected].For a faxed copy of the complete article ["Down to the Wire" by Cynthia Furse and Randy Haupt, IEEE Spectrum, February 2001, pp. 34-39], or to arrange an interview, contact: Nancy T. Hantman, 212 419 7561, [email protected].
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