Optimal Maintenance Policies of Commercial Airframe Cracks  
Author Kodo Ito

 
Co-Author(s) Toshio Nakagawa

 
Abstract As an airframe has finite lifetime and has to be designed lightweight, the maintenance of airframe is indispensable to operate aircraft without any serious troubles. After an airframe begins to operate, it suffers stresses and the stress causes the damage such as cracks of the airframe. Cracks grow with operation time and cause catastrophic phenomenon such as the mid-air disintegration when they become greater than a critical size. So, the managerial crack size is prespecified and PM undergoes when the inspected crack size exceeds it. In this paper, optimal PM pocilies of airframe crack failure are discussed. Airframe states are represented as the Markov renewal process, and one-step transition probabilities are discussed. The total expected cost from the start of operation to the end by failure is defined and the optimal PM policies which minimize it is discussed.

 
Keywords Aircraft, airframe, maintenance, optimal policy, reliability.
   
    Article #:  2065
 
Proceedings of the 20th ISSAT International Conference on Reliability and Quality in Design
August 7-9, 2014 - Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.