10:37 am - Airport Rescue & Fire Fighting notified
10:40 am - Fire and rescue personnel arrive on scene
12:19 pm - Fire and rescue personnel report event was
"controlled"
The batteries were manufactured by GS Yuasa for the
Thales electrical installation and are unique to the
Boeing 787. The same battery model is used for the main
airplane battery and for the battery that is used to
start the auxiliary power unit, which is the one that
caught fire in Boston.
Radiographic examinations of the incident battery and an
exemplar battery were conducted at an independent test
facility. The digital radiographs, or computed
tomography (CT) scans, generated from these examinations
allowed NTSB investigators to document the internal
condition of the battery prior to disassembling it.
Ongoing lab work includes an examination of the battery
elements with a scanning-electron microscope and
energy-dispersive spectroscopy to analyze the elemental
constituents of the electrodes to identify contaminants
or defects.
In
addition to the activities at the NTSB lab in
Washington, members of the investigative team have been
conducting work in Arizona, Seattle and Japan. Their
activities are detailed below.
Arizona - The acceptance test procedure of the APU
battery charging unit was conducted at Securaplane in
Tucson, Ariz., on January 21.
The battery charging unit passed all significant tests
and no anomalies were detected.
Members of the airworthiness group examined the APU
start power unit at Securaplane in Tucson. The same team
traveled to Phoenix to conduct an examination of the APU
controller at UTC Aerospace Systems.
Seattle - NTSB investigators are working with Boeing
teams as part of root cause analysis activities related
to the design and manufacturing of the electrical
battery system.
The two JAL B-787 general purpose module units, which
record airplane maintenance data are being downloaded at
Boeing to obtain information that was recorded after the
airplane's electrical power was interrupted.
Japan - The NTSB-led team conducted component
examination of the JAL B-787 APU battery monitoring unit
at Kanto Aircraft Instrument Company, Ltd., in Fujisawa,
Kanagawa, Japan.
The team cleaned and examined both battery monitoring
unit circuit boards, which were housed in the APU
battery case. The circuit boards were damaged, which
limited the information that could be obtained from
tests.
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