SMart hARness Technolgies

Project supported by the ERDF Electra 2009

Objectives of the Research Projet

The aim of the SMART (SMart hArness Technologies) project is to improve embedded electrical harness within aircrafts and is twofold. On one hand additional functions will be added to the electrical harness and their sizing will be optimized. On the other hand, technologies peculiar to each project partner will be developed in an innovative application unexplored in current R&T projects. Demonstrators of these technologies will be developed and tested in a pertinent environment such that the maturity level 6 on the TRL scale will be reached at the end of the project.

These objectives directly lead to satisfy the global objective of ACARE by optimizing the electrical harness sizing.
Three themes will be dealt and developed during this project:

• Technologies of Wireless communication Microsystems
• Technologies of wiring supervision
• Wiring Multi-Objectives optimization.

Nowadays, technologies of wireless communication Microsystems are mature and offer a lot of possibilities that paradoxically have few applications in aeronautics. The first topic aims to validate the use of these technologies on electrical harness in order to improve harness identification and their configuration maintenance and in order to help install and maintenance.
The technologies of wiring supervision aim to develop a technology enabling to establish a diagnosis or a prognosis on the harness health. This technology will be adapted to a ground technology as a testing mean for manufacturing, installing, verifying and maintaining harnesses.

The last topic deals with wiring optimization. Electrical distribution within aircraft is tree type and generally leads to oversize links between primary and secondary distribution centers. Some previous studies have shown that margins exist in wiring sizing, but they cannot be easily and systematically reduced for lack of tools and processes to implement. This absence of tools is due to the complexity of the optimization to realize. However, applying new optimizing technologies such as multi-agents should be an innovative approach.