Comparative Study for Inspection Planning of Aircraft Structural Components

Abstract

In the aircraft operation, the metallic airframes are usually exposed to the extreme loading conditions during the flights due to which the risk of failure should be assessed and held to an allowed level to prevent the associated loss. If the components are inspectable, the components should be inspected routinely so that the fatigue damage can be detected before failure, which usually requires non-destructive inspection (NDI) techniques to evaluate the damage growth during the maintenance action. There have been several methods to determine the inspection plan in the aircraft industry for this purpose. In this study, four methods: Aircraft Structural Integrity Program (ASIP), Reliability Centered Maintenance Analysis (RCMA), Modified RCMA and Stochastic Life APproach (SLAP), are selected to evaluate the performance in comparative manner for a couple of crack growth problems with the aim to help the maintenance planning engineers select their own inspection plan properly based on the performance of each method. The methods are briefly reviewed, implemented, and examined in comparison for the fatigue test data of the fastener hole specimen under an aircraft load spectrum.