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With the prevalence of more electrical aircraft (MEA), aircrafts are more vulnerable to electrical system faults. The proactive Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) for aircraft electrical systems has become an issue of substantial importance and urgency. Although certain aspects of CBM have been implemented with considerable success, CBM for aircraft electrical systems is still at its early stage of development. Diagnostic and prognostic technologies need to be improved to meet CBM requirements. This paper reviews the existing studies on the CBM for aircraft electrical systems in terms of its concept, content, requirements, hierarchy, methodologies and system configuration, and is intended to provide a technology survey particularly on the state of the art and challenging issues of aircraft electrical system CBM.

This paper provides an overview of recent developments in the area of arc fault detection (AFD) and wire fault location for aircraft wiring systems. Arc faults have been identified as one of the greatest threats to human lives and properties, and the likely cause of several aircraft disasters. With the introduction of high voltage transmission in aircraft to reduce the wiring weight and to meet the increasing power demands, the probability of initiating and sustaining continuous arcs in modern aircraft have been increased. However, arc faults are hard to detect and wiring problems are difficult to locate in aircraft, due to their complex profiles, high impedance property, and pressure sensitive characteristic, etc. The difficulty in resolving this problem is also due to the fact that false alarms cannot be tolerated but missing alarms can be fatal, and arc faults are normally intermittent as a result of the in-flight vibration.