Fuel leakage has the risk of being ignited by external ignition sources, and therefore it is important to detectudany fuel leakage before the departure of the aircraft. Currently, there are no fuel leak detection systems installedudon commercial aircrafts, to detect fuel tank leakage, while only a small number of more recent aircraft, have a fueludmonitoring system, that generates a fuel leak-warning message in cockpit in the case of fuel imbalance between theudtanks. The approach proposed in this paper requires the fuel vent ports on the wings to be replaced with fuel ventudvalves, which can be controlled to be in open or close position. The fuel vent valve will be in close position, whenudcertain conditions are fulfilled (all the related fuel valves closed, pumps not operating, etc.), the fuel tank ullage areaudis then pressurized to 4 psi and the rate of change of the pressure is measured over a period. Several experimentsudhave been conducted and, the result show that a continuous fuel leak of one liter per minute can be detected. Furtherudexperiments show that if the fuel tank is pressurized to higher pressures, a fuel leak can be detected sooner.
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