Development and validation of failure preventive tools for aeronautical applications

Abstract

In the competitive world of aircraft industry, the reduction of maintenance periods is a decisive factor when companies and arm forces are undergoing the procurement processes for the acquisition of their next fleets.Thus being, the investigation in the aeronautical sector today is focusing not only in the development of better and more reliable aircraft systems, but also in the development of techniques and tools that allow for the performance of the required maintenance tasks in faster and more optimized manners. This work arises within this field of investigation addressing the validation of innovative failure preventive equipment for the evaluation of the electromechanical impedance (EMI) response of aeronautical structures, and for the dynamic balancing of propellers of aircraft in the category of Normal, Utility, Aerobatic and Commuter.This work is divided into two parts, in which the first explores the accuracy and competitiveness of one alternative nondestructive test (NDT) equipment developed by Critical Materials S.A. in aeronautical applications, when compared to the classical NDT methods. This part ends with the assessment of the technique's capability to identify defects in one EPSILON TB-30 Nose Landing Gear of the Portuguese fleet which had been put out of service through a high-frequency eddy current inspection.The second part regards the development of a maintenance equipment for the dynamic balancing of propellers systems, specifically optimized for the dynamic balancing of the propeller of the Lycoming engine used in TB-30 aircraft of the Portuguese Air Force. This study ends by highlighting the gains achieved in the overall TB-30 maintenance costs with the use of the developed tool, by comparing the average time used for the process of balancing the Lycoming propeller, with and without the use of this tool.