Aircraft Engine Maintenance Forecasting Using Simulated Mission Damage
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Solution Overview
Problem
The variability in flight missions of aircraft engines, particularly warplanes, makes it difficult to accurately forecast damage and wear, leading to frequent and unpredictable maintenance operations that affect aircraft availability and increase maintenance costs.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that simulate damage counter consumption using a learning database to iteratively draw series of simulation missions, determine maintenance indicators, and apply maintenance strategies to optimize maintenance operations, considering factors like mission type, severity, and duration, allowing for flexible and efficient maintenance planning.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If maintenance operations are scheduled based on damage counters reaching ceilings, then component safety is ensured, but aircraft availability deteriorates due to frequent and unpredictable removals
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary simulation of damage counter consumption using iterative mission draws from a learning database before actual maintenance operations. By forecasting when damage counters will reach ceilings and grouping multiple maintenance operations in advance, the system allows planned removals rather than unexpected ones, improving aircraft availability while maintaining safety
Solution Approach 2:
The system groups multiple maintenance operations that would otherwise occur at different times into a single coordinated removal event. By simulating damage counter trajectories and identifying operations that can be combined, the system reduces the frequency of separate removals, thereby improving aircraft availability without compromising component safety
2Measurement precision
If damage counters are monitored for each component, then maintenance precision is improved, but device complexity increases due to multiple counters and ceilings
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates virtual copies of damage counter behavior through simulation. Instead of directly managing complex interactions between multiple physical counters and ceilings, the system iteratively draws mission scenarios from a learning database to simulate counter consumption patterns. This virtual modeling simplifies the management of complexity while maintaining precise monitoring capabilities
3Reliability
If maintenance operations are performed frequently to ensure safety, then reliability is improved, but loss of time increases due to repeated removals and maintenance cycles
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary simulation to forecast when maintenance operations will be needed, allowing operations to be grouped and scheduled in advance. This prevents frequent separate removals by anticipating maintenance needs and coordinating them into fewer, planned events, thereby reducing total maintenance downtime while maintaining safety
Solution Approach 2:
The system merges multiple maintenance operations that would occur separately into coordinated group removals. By simulating damage counter trajectories and identifying operations that can be combined, the system reduces the frequency of maintenance cycles and the associated loss of time, while still ensuring component safety through comprehensive monitoring
Data Source
AI summary
There is provided a method of and system for forecasting maintenance operations to be applied to an aircraft engine including a plurality of components monitored by damage counters, each damage counter being limited by a corresponding damage ceiling, the method including simulating consumption of the damage counters by iteratively drawing a series of simulation missions from a learning database; for each iteration, determining an accumulated consumption of each of the damage counters, until at least one damage counter related to a current simulation mission reaches a predetermined value limited by the damage ceiling associated with the damage counter; and applying a maintenance strategy on the current simulation mission to determine maintenance indicators representative of maintenance operations to be planned on the aircraft engine.