Electrostatic hazard and protection: expert system for fuel delivery modules

Abstract

It is well-known that fuel supplying the engine of vehicles passes through a filtration process. Previously, fuel pump, filter and pressure regulator were separated; nowadays, they are built together in a compact module and placed into the fuel tank of the vehicle. Components of such a module are mainly made of good insulating plastic material, resulting in significant charging and risk of electrostatic discharge. Replacing all of the plastic parts with electrostatically dissipative materials and applying appropriate grounding and bounding risk can be reduced to almost zero, but it requires extremely high costs. To obtain economical construction with acceptable risk, an expert system had to be created to evaluate different constructions from the aspect of electrostatic charging.