Innovative Method for Real-Time Damage Alleviation

Deployment of Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) on rotorcraft has resulted in significant improvements in maintenance action efficiency, increases in safety, and reductions in cost. Current HUMS provide diagnostic and prognostic information to maintenance crews through Condition Based Maintenance (CBM), which allows parts to be replaced on an as-needed basis. This marks an improvement over legacy approaches, which relied on conservative life estimates that resulted in early component retirement due to a lack of accurate component usage data to determine actual component life. HUMS has shown its value over time, yet it is still a passive system that provides no active fatigue damage alleviation. This SBIR effort is focused on the development of a HUMS interface which will automatically reduce the damage on aircraft components in real-time by modifying the control system output, allowing component life to be extended beyond that which has been realized with HUMS alone. In addition, through control system output modification, damage rates on specific components may be tailored to extend the life up to the next scheduled maintenance activity. The development of a system to track the amount of damage occurring on this component allows for optimization of the flight control system output to reduce structural component damage while maintaining the required maneuverability, flying quality, and handling qualities.