Understanding Life Prediction Technology

February 13, 2020 Michael Traskos

To understand the basis for wire life prediction, there are parts of the process that must be understood from a fundamental perspective and how these fundamentals are applied to the long-term reliability and life prediction of the components. This article will cover some of these basics, the research that has gone into this field, and how it is used as part of EWIS sustainment and service life extension projects. Read more

Review of EWIS for Sustainment

January 30, 2020 Michael Traskos

We measure everything that matters. In the last decade, the efforts of organizations to measure EWIS has been progressively increasing. Perhaps this is because wiring is now considered a system, or because regulations and requirements have emerged, or it may be due to a better understanding of the EWIS maintenance costs. Whatever the reason for better EWIS maintenance issue quantification, it has been a positive because there is data available to substantiate aircraft maintenance actions. The old saying is, “You can’t beat something with nothing”, and for too many years, EWIS maintainers were trying to take on EWIS maintenance without supporting data. Read more

Is my aircraft wiring serviceable?

January 29, 2019 Michael Traskos

A concept employed in the civil engineering field is that of serviceability. At its core, a structure should only remain in-service as long as it is serviceable. A serviceability limit should be based on measurable performance criterion that, if exceeded, remove it from service. In limit state design, the structure fails its serviceability if the criteria of the serviceability limit state are not met during the service life with the required reliability. Read more

Do I Need to Replace My 15/20/30/40 years Old Aircraft Wiring?

December 27, 2018 Michael Traskos

As aircraft age, it is natural to contemplate the aircraft condition as to how much longer the equipment can be maintained. Typically, after the engines, structures, environmental control system (ECS), navigation, landing gear, interiors, flight controls, and fuel system are considered, the question will ultimately appear, “do I need to replace my wires that are 15/20/25/30 years old?” While it would be nice if there were a simple answer, like all engineering, it comes down to the evaluation of the system. Here, we answer this question. Read more

FAQs of EWIS Service Life Extension Programs

June 5, 2018 Michael Traskos

Lectromec has accumulated a set of frequently asked questions related to wire system sustainment. Here, we cover several high level questions about the assessment and its value and the subsequent article we will delve into some of the more technical details. Read more

Frequency of Wire System Incidents

November 14, 2017 Michael Traskos

In July 2017, Lectromec published a white paper on electrical wiring system failures on commercial aircraft. This is a brief video of the finding and what can be done to improve EWIS reliability in commercial aircraft. Read more

Getting the Most from Visual Inspections

October 12, 2017 Michael Traskos

Good data is anything that can be turned into actionable information; this is a critical element in nearly every project. For those that regularly perform EWIS inspections, unless the data is gathered in such a way to improve the aircraft reliability, address technical errors, and/or be used as part of trend analysis, the effort is […] Read more

2016 EWIS Failure Analysis of Commercial Airlines White Paper

July 10, 2017 Michael Traskos

Once every couple years, Lectromec reviews the FAA’s service difficulty reporting (SDR) system to determine the number of EWIS failures in the American commercial airline fleet. We have reviewed the data, performed a thorough analysis, and placed the conclusions into a white paper. This whitepaper provides details the process and the frequency of EWIS failures. […] Read more

Updating Periodic Maintenance Procedures

June 1, 2017 Michael Traskos

An area of aircraft maintenance and wire system sustainment which has been around for the last decade is the enhanced zonal analysis procedures, or EZAP for short. EZAP is a set of procedures developed by the FAA during the 2000s detailing a systematic process for handling of wiring system maintenance based on zones. Lectromec has […] Read more