Civil aircraft engine operation life resilient monitoring via usage trajectory mapping on the reliability contour

Zhou, H. , Farsi, M., Harrison, A., Parlikad, A. K. and Brintrup, A. (2023) Civil aircraft engine operation life resilient monitoring via usage trajectory mapping on the reliability contour. Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 230, 108878. (doi: 10.1016/j.ress.2022.108878)

Abstract

The civil aircraft engine business is complex in operation. Being an asset-heavy business operating highly complex engineering systems, the optimized fleet life-cycle management is essential yet challenging. The aviation systems are known for critical operation conditions, high-standard reliability demands, and high cost in both asset value and through-life maintenance services. Civil aircraft engines typically require 3 to 4 highly costly overhauls through service life to maintain performance and the time-on-wing (TOW) requirements of the airline operators. Multiple levels of maintenance activities need accurate and long-term planning for engine fleets coordinating manufacturing, transportation, supply chains and system performance, based on the service life of the engines. The life of assets in the aviation industry is measured uniquely by two scales - the flying hour (FH) and the flying cycle (FC). This paper proposed to evaluate the aviation systems’ service life combining both FH and FC, and the reliability of the systems be dynamically quantified via the records and future plans of the flight profiles. The most significant shop visit (SV) overhaul long-term planning is therefore optimized by maximizing the fleet TOW availability, considering the business model of ‘charge customers by the flying time’ in the civil aircraft engine business.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This research was funded by Aerospace Technology Institute and Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation funding agency, through the “Digitally Optimised Through-Life Engineering Services” project (113174).
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Zhou, Dr Hang

Creator Roles

Zhou, H.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing, Visualization

• Authors: Zhou, H., Farsi, M., Harrison, A., Parlikad, A. K., and Brintrup, A.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Autonomous Systems and Connectivity
• Journal Name: Reliability Engineering and System Safety
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 0951-8320
• ISSN (Online): 1879-0836
• Published Online: 26 October 2022
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2022 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Reliability Engineering and System Safety 230: 108878
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License