ASAP Aviation Procurement Blog

Dowel pins are a common form of industrial fastener, capable of joining two or more parts together in an assembly. While dowel pins may be made from wood, metal, or plastic, they tend to always be short, cylindrical rods that are tapered, slotted, or grooved. As dowel pins find common use in maintaining accurate alignment for machine components or for acting as location guides, it can be useful to have a basic understanding of such fasteners and their various types on the market.

Even the largest aircraft depend on millions of small parts, many of which are a form of actuator. Actuators are devices that convert electricity into pressure, temperature, or mechanical movements. As such, nearly every process on an airplane depends on some type of actuator. Though it would take many more articles to discuss each and every actuator device aboard an aircraft, many of them can be separated into major categories. Generally, there are hydraulic and pneumatic systems, as well as new actuator technologies like hydraulically amplified self-heating electrostatic (HASEL) actuators.

Avionics are defined as the electronic systems found on aircraft, spacecraft, and satellites. In fact, it is these systems that make flight possible, allowing pilots to operate aircraft safely. The term “avionics” comes from combining “aviation” with “electronics,” and it is a term familiar to many in the aerospace world. In this blog, we will cover the seven systems that make up the basics of avionics.

If you own or operate an aircraft, it is important that the vehicle is well maintained to uphold performance, safety, and reliability of all parts and systems. It is often required to carry out various types of inspections on a regular basis, and regular maintenance can prevent the chance of needing to carry out costly and time-consuming repairs. As such, one should become familiar with the basic types of maintenance that must be carried out, alongside common tips to extend surface lives and deter wear and tear.

Stealth aircraft are designed to remain undetected by using a variety of technologies that reduce the reflection/emission of radar, infrared, visible light, radio frequency, and audio, all of which are under the umbrella of stealth technology. Stealth technology, or low observable technology, is a subdiscipline of military tactics and passive and active electronic countermeasures that cover a wide range of methods used to make aircraft, ships, missiles, and other vehicles or weapons less visible to radar, infrared, sonar, and other various detection methods.

Every piece of machinery is important on an aircraft, and their largest parts, such as wings and the fuselage, are dependent on the smallest fasteners. Those miniscule pieces like bolts, nuts, rivets, and more, may be much more commercially available, but it is just as important that they are aircraft-grade quality. AN, MS, and NAS standards have been created to ensure that the right components are continually used on aircraft to guarantee safety, even on a vehicle which regularly endures rough treatment. Commercial-grade fasteners are typically made of lower-quality materials such as low-carbon steel which have reduced tensile strength and resistance to corrosion. For this reason, it is crucial that one always chooses aircraft-grade hardware that is verified by its AN, MS, or NAS accreditation. Here is a short guide of relevant information for the various aircraft hardware available, all of which are offered on our website.

Since engines wear out as a result of high temperatures, vibration, friction, corrosion, and damage from the ingestion of foreign objects, this combination of stressors, coupled with the high speed of the rotating engine, causes mental fatigue over time. To ensure your engine remains reliable and durable, routine engine maintenance is paramount. In fact, maintenance, repair, and overhaul operations can increase the service life of an engine, eliminating the need for extensive and expensive repairs in the long run.

As aircraft are subjected to a wide-range of environmental extremes and unprecedented stressors, they may experience fatigue or structural failure over time. To be considered airworthy, aircraft undergo rigorous testing before being deemed safe and certified for flight. According to Boeing, equipment and structural failure accounts for about 20% of aircraft accidents, while mechanical failure is attributed for nearly 80%. 

When certain devices conduct signal transmission for their standard operations, they may take advantage of frequency-domain multiplexing, that of which is a technique that serves to divide the total bandwidth into non-overlapping frequency bands for carrying separate signals. This is highly beneficial when one needs to send multiple independent signals over a single cable or optical fiber, and such multiplexing is made possible through passive RF filters known as diplexers. As a filter component featuring three ports, two frequency bands may share an antenna so that separate signals can be transmitted and received simultaneously. In this blog, we will discuss diplexers in more detail, allowing you to have a better understanding of how they are used.

Aircraft are constructed to meet a specific set of requirements, and each component applied must be individually selected for a particular plane. This means that it is essentially impossible for any given aircraft type to share the exact same characteristics and design.