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Problem
Currently, aircraft operators (both civilian
and military) are accruing significant operational costs due
to unnecessary aircraft maintenance being performed and
necessary maintenance being missed based on non-automated
monitoring and aircrew subjective determination of specific
conditions and events of interest to maintenance (e.g.
severe loads, flap overspeed, hard landings, vertical and
lateral loads at the tail). These operational costs include
disruptions in flight schedules (flight delays, flight
cancellations, etc.), rerouting and accommodations for
passengers whose flights were canceled, disruptions in crew
schedules, interruption or unavailability of sorties for
military operations, missed business opportunities for
corporate operators, and unnecessary maintenance man-hours.
A joint FAA and aviation industry committee
formed in 2005 under the auspices of the Aerospace
Industries Association (AIA) and the Air Transport
Association (ATA) to address National Transportation Safety
Board (NTSB) concerns that aircraft may be returning to
service before damage due to a high load event is found,
confirmed the above problems by finding that
- maintenance inspections may occur
unnecessarily or not be correctly identified due to the
reliance on the flight crew to report an event, and
- the use of flight data could increase
situational awareness and reporting accuracy.
Additionally, since most aircraft are only
equipped with accelerometers at the center of gravity (CG)
location, little if any information is known about the loads
experienced at the tail of the aircraft. This lack of loads
data at the tail combined with the fact that aircraft
operators do not have a clear and concise representation of
an airframe’s loads history, can result in either the
aircraft being retired prematurely from service, or being
in-service past their reliable operational lifespan.
ATR's
Approach:
AeroTech’s Quantitative Condition Alerting
and Analysis Support (QCAAS) system will reduce and
eliminate some of the above unnecessary operational and
maintenance costs by enhancing aircraft health monitoring
and maintenance decision-making through automatically
generating real-time reports of specific events for which an
inspection is necessary (e.g. load exceedances), reporting
tail load information through a virtual sensor system, and
providing reports of cumulative statistics on encountered
loads.
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