Abstract
In order to reduce operating costs and increase the operational stability, the aviation industry is continuously introducing digital technologies to automate the state detection of their assets and derive maintenance decisions. Thus, many industry efforts and research activities have focused on an early state fault detection and the prediction of system failures. Since research has mainly been limited to the calculation of remaining useful lifetimes (RUL) and has neglected the impact on surrounding processes, changes on the objectives of the involved stakeholders, resulting from these technologies, have hardly been addressed in existing work. However, to comprehensibly evaluate the potential of a fault diagnosis and failure prognosis system, including its effects on adjacent maintenance processes, the condition monitoring system’s maturity level needs to be taken into account, expressed for example through the technology’s automation degree or the prognostic horizon (PH) for reliable failure projections. In this paper, we present key features of an automatic condition monitoring architecture for the example of a Tire Pressure Indication System (TPIS). Furthermore, we develop a prescriptive maintenance strategy by modeling the involved stakeholders of aircraft and line maintenance operations with their functional dependencies. Subsequently, we estimate the expected implications for a small aircraft fleet with the introduction of such a monitoring system with various levels of technological maturity. Additionally, we calculate the maintenance cost savings potential for different measurement strategies and compare these results to the current state-of-the-art maintenance approach. To estimate the effects of implementing an automated condition monitoring system, we use a discrete-event, agentbased simulation setup with an exemplary flight schedule and a simulated time span of 30 calendar days. The obtained results allow a comprehensive estimation of the maintenance related implications on airline operation and provide key aspects in the development of an airline’s prescriptive maintenance strategy.
Highlights
In recent years, the aviation industry has spent significant research efforts on topics of early stage fault detection and remaining useful life (RUL) prognosis, to effectively monitor and optimize their assets utilization, e.g. in Chiachıo, Chiachıo, Saxena, Rus, and Goebel (2013) and Loutas, Eleftheroglou, and Zarouchas (2017) for structural health monitoring (SHM) approaches or in Ritter et al (2018) and Poole (2015) for condition monitoring techniques of aircraft components and systems
Since this paper addresses the aspects of maintenance planning optimization under consideration of different technological maturity levels of PHM systems, the state-of-the-art research in these areas is evaluated in order to identify research gaps that will need to be addressed by the developed simulation tool
We have shown in this paper an approach to develop and evaluate a prescriptive maintenance strategy for an automated tire pressure condition monitoring technology
Summary
The aviation industry has spent significant research efforts on topics of early stage fault detection and remaining useful life (RUL) prognosis, to effectively monitor and optimize their assets utilization, e.g. in Chiachıo, Chiachıo, Saxena, Rus, and Goebel (2013) and Loutas, Eleftheroglou, and Zarouchas (2017) for structural health monitoring (SHM) approaches or in Ritter et al (2018) and Poole (2015) for condition monitoring techniques of aircraft components and systems. We define the technological maturity as the capability of a condition monitoring technology to reliably detect system degradation and project maintenance requirements. For this paper, based on these requirements, we will develop a prescriptive maintenance strategy for an automated tire pressure management system. As Nemeth, Ansari, Sihn, Haslhofer, and Schindler (2018) define, a prescriptive maintenance strategy utilizes failure projections to minimize the operational implications of necessary maintenance tasks. The different maturity levels of the condition monitoring technology will be modeled by changes in the measurement strategy, the degree of task automation, and capabilities for different prognostic horizons (PH). This paper will be structured as follows: In section 2, we will present an overview of current aircraft maintenance, a literature review of related state-of-the-art research, and a theoretical layout for an automated condition monitoring infrastructure to allow a prescriptive maintenance planning.
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