As wire ages, it becomes brittle and may crack and break. Locating these problems can take hours, days, or more, while expensive or mission-critical aircraft sit idle. Some faults are not reproducible on the ground and show up only in flight, often effectively grounding aircraft while maintainers struggle to replicate or find the problem. Arc Fault Circuit (AFC) Breakers are being designed to detect small arcs before they cause aircraft fires, yet once these breakers have averted disaster, they leave a maintenance nightmare for the technician tasked with locating and fixing the tiny damage within miles of wire snaking through the walls, floor, ceilings, and wings of the aircraft. Our research has created tools and sensors to locate these and other faults in aging wiring.
Samuel Kingston, Evan Benoit, Ayobami S. Edun, Farhad Elyasichamazkot, Dawn E. Sweeney, Joel B. Harley, Paul K. Kuhn, Cynthia M. Furse, "SSTDR Methodology, Implementations, and Challenges," Sensors -- Special Edition on RF Sensors, 2021 https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/16/5268/pdfLinks to an external site.
Cynthia Furse, Chet Lo, You Chung Chung, Paul Smith, Praveen Pendayala, Kedarnath Nagoti, Spread Spectrum Sensors for Critical Fault Location on Live Wire Networks, Journal of Structural Control and Health Monitoring, Vol 12: pp. 257-267, 2005
C Lo, C Furse, Modeling and Simulation of Branched Wiring Networks, Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES) Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2, June 2008, pp. 143-148
P. Smith, C. Furse, P. Kuhn, Locating Intermittent and Static Faults in Complex Wiring Systems, (SAE Conference) AE-8 Aerospace Electrical/Electronic Distribution Systems and the AEISS Aerospace Electrical Interconnect Systems Symposium , October 22-26, 2007, Savannah, Georgia.
Chet Lo, Kedarnath Nagoti, Arthur Mahoney, You Chung Chung, Cynthia Furse, Detection and Mapping of Branched Wiring Networks from Reflectometry Responses, Joint FAA/DoD/NASA Conference on Aging Aircraft, Palm Springs, CA, Jan 31-Feb 4, 2005
C. Furse, P. Smith, Y. Chung, C. Lo, Fault Location in Aging Aircraft Wiring Networks, Aging Aircraft Conference, New Orleans, LA, Sept. 12-15,2003
S.Nagaraj, C.Furse, "A Novel MAC for Sensor Networks in Aircraft", ICNP conference 2003, Second ACM International Workshop on Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications (WSNA 03) San Diego, Sept.19, 2003
For Corrosion Detection: Alex L Robinson, Cynthia Furse, Paul Kuhn, Michael Diamond, Update on LiveWire Fault Detection, SAND Number 2008-1695A,Sensors Workshop 2008, LLNL, Livermore, CA, April 1-2, 2008
Impedance Measurement
Cynthia Furse, Deekshit Dosibhatla, Jacob Gunther, Paul Smith, Chet Lo, Sachin Chandra, Alyssa Magelby, Spread Spectrum Communication Techniques Applied to Impedance Measurement, IEEE Antennas and Propagation International Symposium, June 16-21, 2002, San Antonio, TX, Invited Paper
Cynthia Furse, Paul Smith, Rohit Parakh, Sensors for Wiring and Structural Cable Fault Location, Joint US-India Workshop on Advanced Sensing Systems and Smart Structures Technologies, in cooperation with IIT Bombay, on December 20-22, 2004
A novel way of locating small faults on cable shields:
L.Thomson, B. Jones, J. Stephenson, C. Furse, Non-Contact Connections for Reflectometry and Location of Faults in Cable Shields, 2012 Aircraft Airworthiness and Sustainability Conference, April 2-5, 2012, Baltimore, MD
L. Thomson, B. Jones, C. Furse, Locating Small Apertures in Cable Shielding, 2012 IEEE AP-S International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and 2012 USNC/CNC/URSI Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, July 8-14, 2012
B.Jones, C. Furse, Leaky Fields from Damaged Shields, 2011 IEEE AP-S International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC/CNC/URSI Meeting in Spokane, WA July 4-8, 2011
Paul Smith, Michael Walz, Dr. Cynthia Furse, Locating Electrical Faults Using a Walk-to-Fault Probe, Joint FAA/DoD/NASA Conference on Aging Aircraft, Palm Springs, CA, April 16-19, 2007
E. Lundquist, J. Nagel, S. Wu, B. Jones, C. Furse, Advanced Forward Methods for Complex Wire Fault Modeling, accepted to IEEE Sensors Journal, 2012
E. Lundquist, C. Furse, Novel Inverse Methods for Wire Fault Detection and Diagnosis, 2011 IEEE AP-S International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC/CNC/URSI Meeting in Spokane, WA July 4-8, 2011
Cynthia Furse, Chet Lo, Kevin Wheeler, Fast, Modular Wire Simulation Tools to Better Understand Small Wire Faults, 2010 Aircraft Airworthiness and Sustainment (AA&S) Conference, May 10-13, 2010, Austin, TX
Chet Lo, Cynthia Furse, Modeling and Simulation of Branched Wiring Network,17th Symposium EMC-Zurich, Singapore March 2006
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation, UTC Dayton / USAF, Navair, FAA, State of Utah Centers of Excellence Program, Boeing Aerospace, LiveWire Innovation and others. This work is also supported by the University of Utah Undergraduate Research Opportunities (UROP) program.
Disclosure:
Dr. C.M. Furse is a co-founder of LiveWire Innovation, Inc. which is commercializing SSTDR technology, and therefore has a financial conflict of interest with this company.