Aircraft Usage Severity Indexing for Component Life Validation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing aircraft maintenance systems struggle with efficiently processing vast amounts of flight data to accurately assess the usage severity of critical components, leading to potential in-service failures and inadequate retirement life assignments.
Innovation Solution
A system and method to generate usage severity indices for aircraft components using engine torque, cruise guide indicator, and flight regime data, allowing for continuous monitoring and validation of usage assumptions to ensure sufficient retirement lives and prevent failures.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If traditional flight test methods are used to assess aircraft component usage severity, then measurement precision can be achieved, but device complexity and loss of time increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces complex mechanical flight test systems with an information-processing system that uses existing flight data (torque, power, duration) to calculate usage severity indices. This substitution of mechanical testing with computational analysis reduces device complexity while maintaining assessment accuracy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a computational model that copies and analyzes flight data parameters to determine usage severity, eliminating the need for physical flight tests. This allows multiple assessments to be performed using data copies rather than requiring actual flight repetitions.
2Reliability
If traditional flight tests are conducted to validate usage assumptions, then reliability can be improved, but loss of time and productivity decrease
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary calculations of usage severity indices during normal flight operations by continuously monitoring and processing flight data. This preliminary action accumulates validation information over time without requiring dedicated test flights, thus maintaining reliability while reducing time loss.
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously processes flight data to validate usage assumptions throughout the aircraft's operational life, rather than performing discrete time-consuming flight tests. This continuous validation maintains reliability while minimizing interruption to normal operations and reducing total validation time.
3Measurement precision
If comprehensive flight data is collected to assess usage severity, then measurement precision improves, but device complexity and loss of substance increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential flight parameters (torque, power, duration) needed for usage severity assessment from the complete flight data set. This extraction of critical information maintains measurement precision while reducing the data processing burden by eliminating unnecessary data collection and analysis.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and apparatus for generating usage severity indices are disclosed herein. An example apparatus includes interface circuitry, machine readable instructions, and programmable circuitry to at least one of instantiate or execute the machine readable instructions to determine a first usage severity index for a drive system of an aircraft based on engine torque data, determine a second usage severity index for a rotor system of the aircraft based on cruise guide indicator data, determine a third usage severity index for a pylon structure of the aircraft based on flight regime data, and generate a flight-based usage severity index for the aircraft using the first usage severity index, the second usage severity index, and the third usage severity index.