Enhanced Monitoring Capabilities for Legacy Engine Programs

Abstract

Operational availability and reliability have never been that high than on current single aisle aircraft engines, close to 100%. Engine Condition Monitoring (ECM) contributes to these good statistics and aims at making it even better. This engines generation will still be operated for at least twenty years. Meanwhile, new engine generation, with new monitoring capabilities, will enter into service within a couple of years. Regardless of engine generation, Operators’ expectations on operational availability and maintenance cost reduction will continue to grow. This statement leads to propose monitoring capability update for current engine generation. Historically powerplant monitoring was mainly dedicated to engine removal planning and full power demonstration. With time and product knowledge increase, usage of trend monitoring, on a restricted set of parameters, provided early warning detection capability to assess some systems health and identify line maintenance actions to preserve engine time on-wing. Unfortunately, legacy monitoring process does not take advantage of full avionics capabilities so that there is an opportunity to bring new monitoring functions on current engine fleet. Consequently, constraints for such Project are the adaptation of software without adding any sensor and fitting the existing operational process. New introduced functions will enable to monitor oil consumption, start capability, enhanced performances, sensors intermittency and control system. This paper describes, in a systemic approach, the implementation of the operational process, the adaptation of both embedded and ground system, the outcomes of the monitoring functions and finally the outcomes on the data and skill management on the customer support side. As a consequence, new services for new business can emerge in a new customer support paradigm.