Abstract:
Aircraft operators demand an ever increasing availability of their fleets with
constant reduction of their operational costs. With the age of many fleets
measured in decades, the options to face these challenges are limited.
Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) uses data gathered through
sensors in the aircraft to assess the condition of components to detect and
isolate faults or even estimate their Remaining Useful Life (RUL). This
information can then be used to improve the planning of maintenance
operations and even logistics and operational planning, resulting in shorter
maintenance stops and lower cost. Retrofitting health monitoring technology
onto legacy aircraft has the capability to deliver what operators and maintainers
demand, but working on aging platforms presents numerous challenges. This
thesis presents a novel methodology to select the combination of diagnostic and
prognostic tools for legacy aircraft that best suits the stakeholders’ needs based
on economic return and financial risk. The methodology is comprised of
different steps in which a series of quantitative analyses are carried out to reach
an objective solution. Beginning with the identification of which components
could bring higher reduction of maintenance cost and time if monitored, the
methodology also provides a method to define the requirements for diagnostic
and prognostic tools capable of monitoring these components. It then continues
to analyse how combining these tools affects the economic return and financial
risk. Each possible combination is analysed to identify which of them should be
retrofitted. Whilst computer models of maintenance operations can be used to
analyse the effect of retrofitting IVHM technology on a legacy fleet, the number
of possible combinations of diagnostic and prognostic tools is too big for this
approach to be practicable. Nevertheless, computer models can go beyond the
economic analysis performed thus far and simulations are used as part of the
methodology to get an insight of other effects or retrofitting the chosen toolset.
