Causes of aircraft electrical failures

In 1989, the Materials Laboratory, Wright Research and Development Center, awarded a Phase I SBIR contract to Failure Analysis Associates to investigate the feasibility of developing a handbook for the evaluation of electrical and electronic components during aircraft accident investigation. As part of the work under that contract, a survey of data on failures of aircraft electronic and electrical components was conducted to identify problematic components. The motivation for the work was to prioritize future work on the development of accident investigation techniques for aircraft electrical components. Three sources of data were used in the survey. The primary source was the Airforce Mishap Database. Published data from the Air Force Integrity Program and Hughes Aircraft were also reviewed. Two major conclusions of the work are: problems with interconnections are major contributors to aircraft electrical equipment failures, and environmental factors, especially corrosion, are significant contributors to connector problems