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Sci Tech
Aircraft maintenance: anticipate and manage
Claudia V. Koreas Hughes, a Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) Research leader at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Wright Patterson, Ohio, U.S. who was here at the NDE-2002 conference took the scientists fraternity by surprise, opening up new vistas on the Science and Technology for Tomorrow's Aerospace Force, through her 20-year tested and proven hands-on experience on NDE.
"I work for the U.S. Air Force. So most of what I talk will be with airplanes in mind. But, the philosophy is always NDE application.
There are three specific areas in aging aircraft, which are of primary and immediate safety issues: Corrosion, Cracking and Aging Wiring", Ms. Hughes said explaining the significance of the NDE in the digital age and its future perspective.
"The current approach to maintaining operational aircraft is `Find and Fix'. The future approach will require an `anticipate and manage' philosophy, whereby, maintenance and NDE will focus on determining when and if an actual repair is necessary for safety, readiness and cost", Ms.Hughes said explaining the changing focus of the NDE application especially after the September 11 terrorist attack.
The U.S. Air Force lays a lot of emphasis on security and maintenance of systems.
"Typically, most of our focus is on safety and reliability and more on the maintenance aspects with other agencies within the U.S. that are security conscious," she said.
But in terms of safety and reliability — the NDE application is absolutely essential for maintaining and making sure the US fleet of aircraft fly safely and reliably. "So, the key concern is the safety aspect, second the reliability factor and the third, cost cutting", she added. "They wait till the airplane is either damaged or they feel there is a problem and then they inspect it and fix it".
"What I believe in future is that NDE is much more powerful as we have the data and get lot more information so that instead of bringing in airplanes right after they are damaged, we can perhaps bring them in and monitor them as they are flying and find out that they are getting ready to be damaged.
And so, that makes it more cost efficient and a more effective way of making the systems work because you are anticipating how you are going to use the system, how they are getting damaged, what kind of repair maintenance is required instead of waiting for a damage to occur", she said.
"NDE will actually be integrated into all the other engineering disciplines so that people who own their airplane could actually maintain it", added Ms. Hughes.
T.S.Shankar
in Chennai
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