On average, every commercial aircraft is struck by lightning once or twice a year. After the aircraft lands, an inspection must always be performed to assess the state of the aircraft prior to return to service. The Airbus A350 is no exception and here you will learn the ins and outs of lightning strike inspections performed on this aircraft type.
The development of the Airbus A350 was highly motivated by Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner and it first entered service with Qatar Airways in 2015. It is Airbus’ largest widebody aircraft in production.
Over the years Airbus has delivered a total of 370 aircraft to major airlines all over the world. It is one of the most popular aircraft worldwide.
The Airbus A350 is struck once or twice a year by lightning and given the global fleet in the world, this results in 400 to 800 lightning strikes per year.
Both the Airbus A350 and the Boeing 787 consist of composite materials in more than 50% of their overall structures. The motivation for using composite materials is because they possess superior properties when compared to metallic materials, such as lighter weight, better corrosion and fatigue resistance, and lower thermal expansion.
Airbus suggested Boeing’s use of composite materials for the 787 fuselages was premature, and that the new A350 XWB was to feature large carbon fiber panels for the main fuselage skin. After facing criticism for maintenance costs, Airbus confirmed in early September 2007 the adoption of composite fuselage frames for the aircraft structure. The composite frames would feature aluminum strips to ensure the electrical continuity of the fuselage (for dissipating lightning strikes). Airbus used a full mockup fuselage to develop the wiring, a different approach from the A380, on which the wiring was all done on computers.
In the development phase, the A350 systems were tested and monitored by the Dutch innovation company called Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR). They developed the In-Flight Lightning Damage Assessment System (ILDAS) for this purpose. ILDAS is a special measurement system that records the lightning currents on airborne commercial aircraft. For this system, NLR developed the advanced measurement electronics that convert electrical signals into digital data, placing the sensors on the inside of the cabin.
The challenge for ILDAS’s designers and developers was to devise a system that would not fail at the critical moment, thus recording accurate measurements during lightning strikes. This was accomplished during the icing test flights. NLR constructed 13 data acquisition units for the A350 prototype, which were installed throughout the fuselage and measured the electrical and magnetic fields. When the system detected that lightning struck the aircraft, all units immediately conducted highly synchronized measurements, and then quickly saved the data before the next occurrence.
Despite the frequency of lightning strikes on the Airbus A350, no major aircraft incidents have occurred for the Airbus A350.
After the aircraft is struck by lightning, the aircraft is grounded and thoroughly inspected for damage such as pits and burn marks by aircraft maintenance engineers to guarantee its airworthiness before the next flight. The inspection alone requires 3 licensed aircraft maintenance engineers and 12 hours to complete. The total man-hours for an Airbus A350 lightning strike inspection are 36 hours.
To assess the status of the aircraft, the aircraft maintenance engineers will move from station to station, from stringer to stringer, using additional equipment to inspect the top of the fuselage and the tail. The tail is 17 meters high and not easy to reach while the aircraft elevators and stabilizers are blocking the man lifter equipment. Often during the inspection, additional damage can be caused.
The use of drones for aircraft inspections brings game-changing results for the aviation industry and particularly Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) companies and organizations. All aspects of the inspection procedure, from drone flight to report generation, are automated, allowing the ground team to easily analyze and report the status of an aircraft.
In the event of a lightning strike, using a drone to perform aircraft inspection on the Airbus A350 can decrease the inspection time by 75%. A drone can speed up the entire process of the General Visual Inspection (GVI) during a lightning strike inspection, which can now be performed in minutes (60 minutes) instead of hours (12 hours). Our drone will safely fly around the aircraft and capture high-resolution pictures, allowing aircraft maintenance engineers to make a much faster damage assessment.
AI and drones. This unique combination can make big waves in your hangar, through which you can work even more efficiently. That’s not the future, but the practice Mainblades is currently working towards. No idea how to imagine that? Let us explain it to you.
Mainblades in 2021, what a year it’s been! Despite many turbulences in the aviation industry, Mainblades can look back on a year full of achievements and key milestones. We signed two partnership contracts, gave demonstrations across two continents, flew over 200 automated inspections, participated in several international conferences and managed to secure approval for outdoor flights at active airports in Europe.
It’s official! Mainblades has extended its partnership with KLM Engineering & Maintenance (KLM E&M) to perform automated aircraft drone inspections. The two companies have an extensive history together and came a long way to introduce drone innovation in the aircraft MRO industry. Through a renewed multi-year agreement, the partners are now setting the foundation to make the technology fully operational and to take necessary certification steps required to inspect aircraft on a regular basis at Schiphol Airport.
Safety is one of the top priorities in aviation. That also includes the operation of drones. However, being, and more specifically staying compliant is an underestimated part of drone operations. Mainblades recently achieved a major milestone on this topic: the companies’ application to perform outdoor aircraft drone inspections at airports has been approved by the Dutch Civil Aviation Authority. The approval is in line with EASA regulations and marks a big steppingstone that paves the way for manned and unmanned aircraft operating safely side by side at Schiphol Airport and beyond.
Are you attending Slush 2021?
The world’s leading startup event returns to Helsinki in person on December 1–2. Slush is a student-driven, not-for-profit movement on a mission to help founders change the world. Since the event got going in Helsinki in 2008, it has thrown events in every corner of the globe and built digital initiatives that help founders throughout the year.
With 3,200 startup founders and operators, 1,500 investors, and altogether 8,800 of the entrepreneurially wired, the brightest minds in the startup world will reunite face-to-face in the cold North to embrace new technologies.
Mainblades participates as part of the NL Lounge which is organized in coopartion with Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (RVO) and the Netherlands Point of Entry.
If you happen to be in Helsinki for Slush 2021, be sure to come by the NL Lounge, have a coffee and meet our team on-site to have a chat about drones and innovation in aviation!
Find out more about the Dutch participation here!
Most people don’t think about it when they switch on their light in the morning, but the electrons that light up the lamp on their bedside table have already traveled hundreds of kilometers through high-voltage lines via countless electricity pylons. Crucial infrastructure, which must be inspected regularly and thoroughly. Currently, a time and cost consuming procedure. In order to inspect those lines more efficiently, Mainblades and Dutch Drone Company (DDC) partnered together to develop Powerblades – a drone-based inspection technology which can execute an inspection in a fully automated fashion.
In the Netherlands there are an estimated 5000 high voltage towers. It is important that they are well maintained and in good condition. Inspecting them however, currently takes up a large part of the budget from operators. For an inspection the entire line must be switched off. “Every day that a tower is out of order costs a lot of money “, says Dejan Borota, Director of Mainblades. Once turned off, an inspector must climb into the mast and manually inspect all possible problem areas according to a protocol. The engineer has to return to the office to manually create a report. A cost-and time-consuming procedure, especially given that one inspector can only inspect two to three towers per day. This way, inspections are based on an incidental need rather than on a regular basis, which means that in many cases the towers cannot be monitored in time.
“Our partner realized that it would be ideal if they could do such inspections while the high-voltage line is still in operation“, says Jochem Verboom, Chief Technology Officer at Mainblades. “We partnered up with DDC to proof that a fully automated drone solution can achieve exactly that”. For the past 10 months Mainblades and DDC therefore worked intensively on a technology to automate the entire inspection process including drone flight, photo capture, data analysis and reporting. PowerBlades was born. “This is a unique approach compared to existing drone-based inspection solutions“, Verboom notes. “Non-automated alternatives are time consuming and expensive because even for experienced drone pilots it’s very difficult to capture the required images and the data is not consistent. In addition, the images from the drone need to be analysed after the flight.“ The aim of PowerBlades however is that operators can standardize inspections with flights that are fully automated. This saves time and money. Not only because inspections are performed consistently, but also because issues like corrosion, cracks and leaks are identified before they can become problems that require shutdowns and major fixes. “The impact we are foreseeing with this technology are more frequent, less costly inspections and much improved system reliability“ according to Verboom.
As a launching customer, the largest Dutch operator functions as an important strategic partner for the roll-out of the PowerBlades project which is supported by the REACT EU Kansen voor West subsidiary. In this process, both parties contribute with their unique knowledge. DDC is one of the leading companies in the Netherlands that offers drone inspections as a service with special expertise on operations and regulations. Mainblades contributes in the form of intelligent software that allows the drone to perform automated flights and recognize damages with Artificial Intelligence. Currently, the relationship is focused on demonstrating the added value of the technology. The partners have a license and permission to use the operators’ assets to develop, test and demonstrate the use and usefulness of PowerBlades. For this, a series of production level pilot inspections has been conducted over the past 10 months in which the groundwork of the technology has been laid. Various tower types have been mapped, points of interest (e.g. cotter pins) have been identified, a data set of photos was created, as well as an iPad application developed that enables the inspectors to perform an automated inspection safely from the ground. The end goal is that in the future an automated inspection can be performed quickly and consistently based solely on customer input. “Because we are adding automation to the process, inspection times can be kept short, allowing up to eight towers to be inspected per day on a regular basis. This is very significant for operators”, Borota notes.
Through this project, the partners are paving the way for a new generation of self-flying inspection drones. “We want to set completely new standards for data accuracy, system reliability and safety for these kind of inspections“, Verboom points out. Both companies see the market for drone inspections of high-voltage towers growing strongly but point also to the high quality requirements. A drone that takes pictures is not enough. „Our partner wants complete and relevant data, but also tools to quickly analyze that data and extract insights from it. We are pleased to see the results we achieved so far. Of course, we can still improve on things, but we are making steps in the right direction”.
Over the next months Mainblades and DDC continue their efforts to finetune the technology. The partners expect that once PowerBlades has been shown to work in the Netherlands, the technology could quickly expand to other markets in Europe and beyond.