In December 1999, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Naval Air Systems Command, and the Office of Naval Research initiated a joint research and development program aimed at the development of arc-fault circuit breakers (AFCB) suitable for the protection of aircraft electrical wiring. Two independent contracts for the development of 115 Vac single-phase AFCBs were awarded; one to the Eaton Aerospace Company and one to the Hendry Telephone Company. Each contractor was to develop arc-fault algorithms and deliver developmental circuit breakers to the FAA and the U.S. Navy for flight test. AFCB detection algorithms were required to be sensitive enough to rapidly identify an arc condition and, conversely, not so sensitive that the device trips on normal electrical transients associated with various load equipment current signatures and electrical power systems operations such as bus transfers. The deliverable circuit breakers were also to be a form-fit replacement for existing thermal magnetic breakers' easy retrofit into aging aircraft. The FAA conducted subsequent flight-testing in an FAA-owned Boeing 727-25C aircraft. Eight aircraft circuits were selected for fitting with AFCBs. The circuits provided a cross section of load types powered from various aircraft power busses. An instrumentation system was installed to record the voltage and current waveforms associated with each circuit to assist in the analysis of any AFCB failure and nuisance-tripping events. This report describes the flight test effort for evaluating the performance of the developmental AFCBs. In total, the flight test effort was comprised of 118.9 hours flight time during which 929.7 operational hours of AFCB data were collected. All flight hours were accumulated using normal aircraft operational profiles.
115 Vac Single-Phase Arc-Fault Circuit Breaker Flight Test
2005
192 pages
Report
Keine Angabe
Englisch
SAE Technical Papers | 2004
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