摘要 |
A system and method for an arc fault detection system for aircraft wiring system is disclosed. Upon detection of arc fault events, the system transmits a signal that may be sent to an existing circuitry of the aircraft electrical system, which disconnects the power to the circuits, thereby extinguishing the arc. The system can be either utilized as a stand-alone system or incorporated into existing products or systems. When an arc event occurs on a power cable, a broadband noise event is similarly induced upon the affected cable. The system first uses a pick-up coil (15) to sense and pick up this broadband signal from the power cable (5) of the wiring system, and then amplifies (17) the signal. The amplified signal is applied to a high-pass filter (20) to only pass frequency components above a predetermined frequency. The high-passed frequency components are then applied to band-pass filters (32-35), using a plurality of non-harmonically related center frequencies to generate narrow frequency slices of the signal. Each slice of the signal is rectified (42-45) to generate a d.c. level signal. Detection can be made for each d.c. level signal using level detectors (52-55). Power and ground sources are also applied to their narrow band-pass filters (31, 36), rectifiers (41, 46) and level detectors (51, 56). By using a logic matrix (60), an arc fault can be determined when all d.c. level signals from the event indicate detection, while signals from the power and ground sources indicate no system noise.
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