ASRC Aerospace’s Associate Program Manager and Chief Scientist, Pedro Medelius, Makes Military and Civilian Aircraft Safer
Bagram, Afghanistan, October 2004, and one particular Prowler aircraft was exhibiting intermittent problems on a critical cockpit display panel. To make matters worse, these problems were seldom seen during troubleshooting, but occurred multiple times on nearly every flight.
It was a major safety problem, especially when flying at night in a war zone in mountainous terrain. Squadron maintainers had been troubleshooting for weeks, changing all associated removable components and performing wire checks with no discernable success. After approximately 60 hours of troubleshooting, which included phone consultation with engineering and the manufacturer of the electronic system that was providing intermittent symptoms, the Naval Air Technical Data and Engineering Service Command (NATEC) decided to try the Eclypse ESP+ Standing Wave Reflectometer (SWR), and immediately observed a measured change of conductor length compared to similar paths on the same aircraft.
The Eclypse ESP+ SWR tester was developed by NASA Kennedy Space Center, licensed to and manufactured by Eclypse International, and provided to NATEC under the Automated Wiring Analysis (AWA) Program. Eclypse is currently marketing two commercial SWRs based on the NASA patent. One is the ESP, which provides technicians with a simple, plain-English response regarding where the fault is located from the point they are testing. The second product is the ESP+, which provides added memory and software for looking at the reflections from the aircraft, which is useful in determining some level of “soft fault.”
Future configurations of the model ESP SWR fault location technology may be seen in other products, such as onboard aircraft, and in a variety of applications other than aircraft. “The technology used in the SWR device was developed to detect problems that could lead to accidents such as the one that resulted in the catastrophic failure of TWA 800 a few years ago,” said Dr. Pedro Medelius, Chief Technologist for ASRC Aerospace Corporation, which helped invent the technology. “In that instance, a broken wire inside an empty fuel tank created a spark that ignited the remaining fuel vapors in the tank and caused a major explosion.” When looking at a massive launch vehicle or aircraft, it’s hard to imagine that a problem with one tiny wire could paralyze performance; however, with this portable tool, it is now possible to accurately pinpoint malfunctions within cables and wires to reliably verify conditions of electrical power and signal distribution.
The Eclypse Model ESP+ has undergone operational evaluation by the Navy, Marines, and Air Force, and the Army has now put these instruments into the battle damage and repair kits that go to Afghanistan, Iraq, and other parts of the world where helicopter support is required. This innovation has certainly proved to be versatile in saving time and lives.