TE Connectivity is continually focused on improving the power and speed of its aerospace products, which go well beyond ”a bit of wire and a connector”.
Martin Cullen, TE Connectivity’s senior manager of business development, tells FlightGlobal that the firm “provides connectivity between different systems in the aircraft”, with an emphasis on the high-voltage power-distribution systems of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft and other innovative air transportation vehicles.
”We do a lot of work with eVTOL customers, and now eSTOL regional aircraft manufacturers, and make new technology for them,” Cullen says.
For example, the firm produces “dynamically flexible wire” used in tiltrotors, which bend and fatigue the copper inside over many flight cycles.
”Regular cables never had to do that, right? That continual movement, and also the environmental conditions – sand, dust, salt ingression and humidity” present difficulties for traditional aerospace connectors, Cullen says.
”We’ve done a lot of work on hermetic connectors as well as for high voltage, which nobody else in the world has,” he says. “We have a lot of new technology coming out, particularly for electric flight, because we want to be at the forefront of engineering.”
TE Connectivity’s aerospace unit draws on technology developed across the 90,000-employee company, which makes terminals, sensors, antennas and relays for various industries, including for the data-services, telecommunications and satellite sectors.
“When we see a need, we can reach other [business units] and bring them in to qualify something for aerospace applications,” Cullen says. “We do flame-testing, shock-testing, and operational testing because the truck business doesn’t have to do what you do for aerospace.”
