Aerospace Aviation 360 Blog

Fuel contamination is a potentially detrimental problem. Not only can it force your aircraft to stay grounded for an extended period of time, it can also take a huge bite out of your wallet. Microorganisms called microbes are the most common culprit in cases of fuel contamination. They feed on the hydrocarbons present in aircraft fuel storage tanks and grow in the water that accumulates. If these microbes are not attended to quickly, they will multiply quickly and create operational problems such as blocked pipes, valves, filters, and other fuel systems. Here are 5 indications of fuel contamination to beware of.

Aircraft maintenance is of the utmost importance to ensure the safety of the aircraft being used. Thus, an integral part of aircraft maintenance are the tools and equipment used to help maintain and support the aircraft. Aircraft tooling and equipment include maintenance access stands and platforms, tow bars, jacks, lifting equipment and engine tooling. In this blog, we will learn about the functions of aircraft tooling and equipment, and why they are essential to aircraft maintenance.

Safety is the highest concern in the aviation industry, with every rule, law, and procedure motivated by the desire to increase protections for the passengers and cabin crew of every flight. Given the inherent risks of flight, adherence to these standards must be unrelenting and absolute. 

Modern aircraft are made of numerous metal components, and those components obviously need to be held together. The body panels must be attached to the skeleton, the wings to the fuselage connector, and so on. There are several different methods for holding metal parts together, such as riveting, bolting, brazing, and welding. The purpose of all of these processes is to produce a union that is as strong as the parts that are joined.

Fiber optic cables are fundamentally similar to electrical cables but transmit light rather than electricity. Between their unique construction and methods of transmitting information, they have numerous advantages over conventional copper cable. First, optic fiber cables have much greater bandwidth than copper cables. Copper was originally designed for voice transmission, and thus has a limited bandwidth. Fiber optic cables, on the other hand, were created with modern information technology in mind, and can carry more data than copper cables for the same diameter of cable. Within optic fiber cable families, single-mode fiber delivers twice the throughput of multimode fiber.

Bearings are, by definition, parts of a machine that bear friction between a rotating part and its housing. Ball bearings are the most common type of bearing, and as their name implies, use bearings to maintain the separation between the inner races. Ball bearings are most often used between cantilever and rotary shafts to transfer axial or radial load and need to be retained in all three directions (radial, axial, and circumferential) in relation to their housings and shafts. In this blog, we’ll use some examples of bearings in machinery, and their retaining methods to explain how they work.

Engine failure is not uncommon in airplanes and is no stranger to piston engine aircraft. These engines use one or more reciprocating pistons to convert pressure into a rotational motion and operate on the same basic principles as automobile engines. Piston engine aircraft utilize dual ignition systems to improve redundancy and air cooling to reduce weight. Despite this, these aircraft are susceptible to mechanical failure including spark failure, fuel issues, and airflow deficiencies.

Aircraft data plates are Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved identifications for an aircraft. The plates are often metal and are etched with vital registration information about the aircraft. It includes the date of manufacture, model number, serial number, and registration number. All aircraft— from military grade to amateur built— are required by the FAA to display a data plate.

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who likes abrupt stops. It’s relatively normal on a bike, worrisome in a car, and just plain old dangerous on a plane. But, surprisingly, airplanes didn’t always have brakes. In the early days of aviation, when the Wright Brothers had just stunned the world with their first sustained flight in a heavier-than-air contraption, there were no brake systems; slower speeds and skidding to a gradual stop were the norm. Fortunately, that’s the no longer the case due to the advancements in aviation made during WWI.

When looking at the flight path of an aircraft between two points on earth, one will quickly realize that the path that the aircraft takes to its destination is never straight, rather being an arc across the globe. While one may think that this is an inefficient choice that will lead to higher costs and lengthier flight times, there is actually a very good reason as to why this is done. To put it simply: aircraft fly across the globe in an arc due to the curvature of our round planet.