Failure Mode and Effect Analysis for a military nose landing gear project

Abstract

Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) techniques were originally developed by the US Military and have been used as techniques for assessing the reliability and effects of equipment failures. However, the first notable applications of FMEA techniques are related to the impressive development of the aerospace industry in the mid-1960s. FMEA is a methodology for systematically analyzing the failure modes of a project, product or process, prioritizing their importance, identifying system failure mechanisms, analyzing potential failure modes and the effects of these failures, followed by corrective actions, which are applied in the stage of conceptual and detailed design of the product. All approaches to FMEA methods in the scientific literature converge to achieve three goals, namely: the ability to predict the type of failure that may occur, the ability to predict the effects of the failure on system operation, and the establishment of the steps to prevent failure and its effects on the system operation. The FMEA for the project of a nose landing gear analyzes the failure modes of the product and their effects in operation, as a consequence of project deficiencies and identifies or confirms critical functions. To apply the FMEA method to the project of the nose landing gear of a military training aircraft, the following steps need to be accomplished: product description and identification of components; identification of functions; identification of potential ways of failure; estimating the frequency of causes of failure; appreciation of the severity of effects; assessment of difficulties in detecting defects; calculation of the Risk Priority Number (RPN); establishing the measures and corrective actions for the analyzed project.