Structural Airframe Maintenance Strategy Comparison: A New Approach

Abstract

Currently, structural airframe maintenance is based on preventive maintenance such as damage tolerance approach, which consists in scheduling inspections over the entire life of the aircraft. Damages that could in a near future threaten the in- tegrity of structures are detected and repaired at predetermined inspections. Signifi- cant researches made to improve structural maintenance costs led to condition-based maintenance using an embedded system such as a structural health monitoring system that continuously tracks the structure and gives a real-time health status. Our paper proposes a general mathematical framework based on a probabilistic model to com- pare the lifecycle cost of different structural maintenance strategies. Useful analytical formulas allow to quantify the average number of fuselage panels to be replaced af- ter any number of cycles and over the aircraft lifetime. The cost-effectiveness of condition-based maintenance alternatives using structural health monitoring systems can therefore be quantified and compared to traditional maintenances.