Inspection Program Development for an Aircraft Fleet and an Airline on the Basis of the Acceptance Fatigue Test Result

Abstract

An inspection interval planning is considered in order to limit the probability of any fatigue failure (FFP) in a fleet of N aircraft (AC) and to provide an economical effectiveness of airline (AL) under the limitation of fatigue failure rate (FFR). A solution of these two problems is based on the processing of the result of acceptance fatigue test of a new type of aircraft. During this test an estimate of the parameter ϴ, of a fatigue crack growth trajectory has been obtained. If the result of this acceptance test is too bad then this new type of aircraft will not be used in service. A redesign of this project should be done. If the result the acceptance test is pretty good then the reliability of the aircraft fleet and the airline will be provided without inspections. For this strategy there is a maximum of FFP (a maximum of FFR) as a function of an unknown parameter ᶿ. This maximum can be limited by the use of the offered here procedure of the choice of the inspection number. The economic effectiveness of the AL operation is considered using the theory of Markov process with rewords.

Keywords

• monte carlo
• markov chains
• minimax
• inspection program and approval test
• fleet reliability
• economic effectiveness