Intelligent Management of Helicopter Health and Usage Management Systems Data

Abstract

Helicopter health and usage management systems (HUMS) generate large amounts of data, which are downloaded to ground-based systems. The data are automatically examined on download for damage indications, which provide the immediate go/no-go response required by the aircraft operations management. This level of reactive fault detection and diagnosis is reasonably well understood and has been demonstrated to improve aircraft availability and airworthiness. To achieve further benefit and maintenance cost savings from HUMS, another level of analysis is required, leading to prognostics and predictive maintenance through intelligent management (IM) of the accumulated HUMS records. In collaboration with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Smiths has developed a suite of IM methods and has successfully applied them to gearbox seeded fault data. Working closely with the UK Ministry of Defence (UK MOD), Smiths has tested these methods on Chinook HUMS data, including an in-flight transmission bearing failure incident described in this article. The result is a high degree of early anomaly detection and a clear view of the deterioration to failure. The objective of the MOD programme has been to apply IM tools to the enormous quantity of HUMS data being gathered, thereby enabling improved analysis capability, increased levels of automation, and more intelligent use of resources. The article presents the results of the work carried out under both the CAA and the MOD programmes.

State-of-the-art in integrated vehicle health management

“…references [38] and [39]), and development planning (e.g. references [6], [13], [16], [19], and [40]).…”

Multi-sensor optimal placement of rotor-bearing system based on fault diagnosability

“…Its health status is directly related to the safe operation of the whole mechanical equipment. [1][2] According to statistics, the failure of the rotorbearing system accounts for about 30% of the total failures of rotating machinery, and rotor-bearing failure has been considered one of the most important causes of failure in rotating machinery. 3 In the early stages of rotor bearing failures, the interference of the external environment and a large amount of information about the structure and moving parts in the mechanical equipment can superimpose on the collected signals and form background noise, which makes early rotor bearing failures difficult to detect and diagnose.…”

An Analysis of the Gear Meshing Characteristics of the Main Planetary Gear Trains of Helicopters Undergoing Shafting Position Changes

“…Therefore, condition monitoring for helicopter transmission has always been one of the most critical technologies to guarantee the integrity of the helicopters, enhance operational and personnel safety, and reduce the overall maintenance costs [4,5]. Over the past decades, health and usage monitoring systems (HUMS) have been developed and implemented in helicopters to monitor the health status for the main gearbox and other key components of transmissions, improving condition-based maintenance for helicopters [6,7]. Meanwhile, a batch of fault diagnosis researches around the bearings and gears of the main gearbox emerged [8][9][10].…”