Financial and risk assessment and selection of health monitoring system design options for legacy aircraft

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.