D.-M. Steinweg, M. Hornung

Today, 30 years after the introduction of the first aviation industry standard specifically dedicated to health management, modern aircraft are equipped with a variety of prognostics and health management applications. It is envisioned that structural health monitoring (SHM), as the next evolutionary step in aircraft health management, enables the achievement of zero downtime due to unscheduled maintenance events. Besides the avoidance of unscheduled maintenance, various other applications of SHM are discussed in literature, ranging from operational process improvements to new aircraft structure design philosophies. Due to potential cost savings, aircraft operators and manufacturers inherently take a strong interest in a detailed evaluation of the impact of SHM on operational processes and thus lifecycle costs (LCC). For the lack of compelling and credible business cases, the introduction of such technologies is inhibited in practice. In order to illustrate financial benefits, various methods evaluating the impact of SHM on aircraft LCC and operational processes have been proposed. While they offer extensive insight within their scope of research, their ability to consider interdisciplinary implications is intrinsically limited. By presenting a literature review of current evaluation methodologies, the work in hand seeks to answer the following principal research questions: Q1: What type of SHM-applications are being analyzed? Q2: What are the main challenges when analyzing the cost and benefit of SHM? Q3: What methodologies are employed to analyze the cost and benefit of SHM? To this end, an attempt is made to characterize and evaluate these methods with respect to their capabilities of correctly representing health monitoring characteristics, operational and organizational processes as well as influenced LCC. It is found that SHM constitutes a complex impact on aircraft and organizations while current studies primarily focus on individual aspects lacking the ability to identify benefits outside their scope of investigation. Depending on the employed methodology, the identified influence of SHM on aircraft lifecycle cost varies between studies and is inconsistent.

Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress 2018, Friedrichshafen

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt - Lilienthal-Oberth e.V., Bonn, 2019

Conference Paper

englisch

21,0 x 29,7 cm, 16 Seiten

urn:nbn:de:101:1-2019012513401163137304

10.25967/480135

Structural Health Monitoring, Lifecycle Cost

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Steinweg, D.-M.; Hornung, M. (2019): Methods Evaluating the Impact of Structural Health Monitoring on Aircraft Lifecycle Costs. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt - Lilienthal-Oberth e.V.. (Text). https://doi.org/10.25967/480135. urn:nbn:de:101:1-2019012513401163137304.

25.01.2019