Ground Test Equipment
It is the job of ground test equipment to give maintenance teams a way to verify the safety and integrity of grounding systems before any issues can put aircraft, personnel, or sensitive electronics at risk. With these instruments, one can measure ground resistance, soil resistivity, bonding quality, continuity, and grounding loops, as well as confirm that an earth ground system is capable of handling fault currents in a safe manner.
There is good reason for reliable testing; resistance is not static. It will vary with time on account of corrosion, changes in soil moisture and temperature, new work done at the facility, or even damage from a lightning strike or utility overvoltage. To get an accurate reading in the field, technicians make use of ground resistance testers, micro-ohmmeters, clamp-on and earth continuity testers, frequently without having to take the system offline.
The method employed will depend on the application at hand. For multi-grounded systems, there is stakeless clamp-on testing, while other situations may call for 2-point or 3-point fall-of-potential, 4-point soil resistivity, or selective testing. In today’s demanding work environments, where dust and moisture are factors, many of these modern units come with rugged casings and the ability to store and download data.
For those in aviation, facility or electrical maintenance who need to be sure of their measurements and the reliability of their grounding, AvionTEq has the right ground test equipment for the task.