Maintenance, prognostics and diagnostics approaches

for aircraft engines

Veronica Fornlöf1, Diego Galar1, Anna Syberfeldt1, Torgny Almgren2,
Marcantonio Catelani3, Member, IEEE, Lorenzo Ciani3, Member, IEEE
1
University of Skövde, Skövde, Sweden
2
GKN Aerospace Engine Systems, Trollhättan, Sweden
3
Department of Information Engineering, University of Florence, Florence (Italy)
[email protected]

Abstract— In avionics application one of the most important Most notably, in the design phase the aspects related to
competition factors is the reliability, given that the failure diagnostic and prognostic is useful not only to prevent failures,
occurrence may leads to a critical state for the functioning of the but also for many other purposes that can be summarized in the
aircraft. Different maintenance, prognostics and diagnostics following list:
approaches are possible with the final aim to optimize both
system’s availability and safety. Aircraft engines represent a • to compare alternative designs,
safety critical part of the airplane. For this reason it is a key issue
• to identify potential design weaknesses,
to allocate the proper amount of maintenance at each individual
maintenance event. In this paper a mathematical replacement • to analyze life-cycle costs,
model is proposed to guarantee that the correct amount of
maintenance is performed. • to plan logistic support strategies,
• to establish targets for further reliability test,
Keywords— Maintenance, prognostics; diagnostics; aircraft
engines; remaining useful life. • to optimize the conditions of use,
• to optimize the thermal design on electronic parts.

I. INTRODUCTION
This paper is focused on the aircraft engines. These
Engineering systems, components and devices are not
equipment are complex and advanced systems that has to meet
perfect. A perfect design is one which remains operational,
high standards of safety and reliability. Maintenance and how it
without any failures, during a preselected life. This is an
is performed, is of the utmost importance. However, while an
idealistic point of view, however, it must be acknowledged that
equipment is being maintained, it is not available for operation
practical and economical limitations dictate the use of a not so
a fact that can have critical consequences if the device in
perfect design. Designers, manufacturers and end users,
question is needed for operation due to for example a safety
however, strive to minimize both the occurrence and
critical situation. Consequently, it is important to determine
recurrence of failures. In order to minimize failures in
exactly what maintenance is needed and to avoid excessive
engineering systems, the designer must understand “why” and
maintenance. When maintenance is performed, and in what
“how” failures occur. Understanding these dynamics would
extent, affects the availability of the system whereof the
consequently help them prevent these abovementioned failures.
maintenance should be performed in such way that the system
To maximize system performance it is also important to is available for operation as much as possible. For example a
know how often such failures may occur, which involves military engine must in a combat situation be maintained so
predicting the occurrence of failures [1]. that it as soon as possible can be taken back to operation [5].
Reliability, cost effectiveness and time-to-market Furthermore it’s important to note that all assets necessarily
considerations play an important role in the design, materials suffer wear and tear during operation. Diagnostic and
selection and manufacturing decisions, and are the key issues prognostics can assess the current state of health of a system
in competing in the global market [2-4]. and predict its remaining useful life based on features that
capture the gradual degradation of its operational capabilities.
The reliability evaluation in a complex system could be Diagnostic and Prognostics are critical to improve reliability,
conducted throughout three main phases: the concept and safety, plan successful work, schedule maintenance, and reduce
definition phase, the design and development phase, and the down time and maintenance costs [6].
operation and maintenance phase.

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 II. A CASE STUDY OF SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS: AN AIRCRAFT
ENGINE
Commercial aircraft, military aircraft, missiles, spacecraft,
and launch vehicles are commonly used to illustrate the
concept of complex systems. These vehicles are composed by
several subsystems and components that have to be integrated
into a large-scale system. For these systems design and
manufacturing phases are not an easy task and require qualified
organizations with highly trained staff [7]. These systems can
then be part of a much larger system, such as an air force that
Fig. 2. RM12 aircraft engine and its modules
consists of several systems that together form a SoS (System of
System).
An aircraft engine itself may be described as a system of III. MAINTENANCE POLICIES IN AIRCRAFT ENGINES
systems. In fact, the engine can be divided into seven separate Reparable systems are systems where the time of operation
modules [5], as shown in Fig. 1: is not continuous, since their operating life cycles are described
by a sequence of up and down states. Therefore the system
1. fan module compressor module; operates until it fails, then it will be repaired and so it returns to
2. high-pressure compressor module; its original functioning state. It will fail again after some
random time of operation, get repaired again, and this process
3. combustor module; of failure and repair will reiterate; hence the state of the system
4. high-pressure turbine module; alternates between an operating state and a repair state.
5. low-pressure turbine module; Maintenance procedures related to corrective actions in
production must include:
6. afterburner module;
- Effective processing of complaints and subassembly
7. gearbox module. nonconformity reports.
- The search for causes of nonconformity related to the
process and recording of the results of this search.

Fan
High
Pressure Combustor
High
Pressure
Low
Pressure Afterburner
- Determination of corrective actions necessary to eliminate
Compressor Turbine Turbine causes of nonconformity.
- Application of control means to assure that the corrective
action is implemented and that it produces the required effect.
Maintaining an aircraft engine requires a complex balance
Gearbox between not to excessive maintenance and neither too little
maintenance (which would send the engine back for repair too
soon). The aviation industry is regulated by several safety
constraints that tends to result in over-maintenance, that is,
Fig. 1. Aircraft engine modules maintenance is performed more often than necessary in order
to fulfill safety regulations. After all, an unexpected failure that
could lead to an aircraft crash must be avoided at all costs.
By considering the engine composed by more modules Maintenance, and in particular correct maintenance, is a
leads to an availability improvement. In fact, if a specific part prerequisite for a successful aviation industry.
fails and, therefore, must be replaced, only that module should Maintenance can be described as a combination of all the
be removed for repair, and not the whole engine [8]. At the technical and associated administrative actions intended to
same time, it is important to note that the subsystems are in retain an item in, or restore it to, a state in which it can perform
turn built up from several components that must be assembled its required function. The goal of maintenance is to prevent
in a certain order so to remove a module it is necessary to fatal damage to the machine, human beings, and the
separate the system so that the module is released (see Fig. 2, environment. Unexpected machine failure can be prevented by
[5]). using condition-based maintenance planning to increase the
In addition an aircraft cannot work without several safety of production and quality control.
peripheral systems. The concept of a module-based aircraft There are three main different maintenance strategies [5, 9]:
engine was chosen to ease engine maintenance. A module that
requires maintenance can be replaced with a spare part either at • Run-to-break
the parking area or in the maintenance hangar, and the engine • Preventive maintenance
can then be returned to operation while only the module
needing maintenance is kept in the maintenance hangar. • Condition-based maintenance

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 All these maintenance strategies are important in aviation. Moreover, LTS allows to reduce costs because components
More in detail, run-to-break maintenance can be used in some can be used longer, and that the life limit of LLPs can often be
specific cases, but it is not suggested for the engine. If it has extended beyond the expected lifetime of the engines.
been chosen to follow a conservative approach with a high
safety factors preventive maintenance is used. Finally, The LTS method uses engine parameters and analyzes data
condition-based maintenance represent a natural evolution of from each mission flown to calculate how many life cycles
preventive maintenance made possible by technological have been consumed for each mission [5]. LTS reduces the
advances. uncertainty about the load situation for each individual
component but, at the same time, increases the variation in
There are two types of components inside an engine: life- consumption rates between components because a component
limited parts (LLP) and on-condition parts (OC-parts). The is exposed to more or less load. Another effect of LTS is that it
LLPs are safety critical elements with a fixed lifetime. A is no longer possible to give an exact estimate of how many
failure of these items, as fan blades and disks, could leads to an flight hours remain for an engine before its next maintenance
aircraft crash. Instead, the OC-parts are not safety critical since its life cycle consumption is directly dependent on the
components like the exhaust frame assembly or the low- circumstances in which it has been used thus it is more difficult
pressure turbine case. Typically, aircraft engines are brought to predict when the next maintenance interval will occur [5].
into the maintenance hangar for two reasons: unscheduled
maintenance and routine/scheduled maintenance [10]. The OC-parts replacement activity is evaluated against their
main reason for taking an engine to the maintenance hangar for component maintenance plan (CMP). The remaining flight
repair activities is that an LLP has reached its life limit and hours for an OC-part are never estimated. Currently, their
needs to be replaced. Otherwise, an engine may be taken to the historical failure data is primarily used to predict future
maintenance hangar for other reasons such as any unresolved demand for spare parts.
faults indications that have been detected. In both cases, the GKN, in cooperation with Chalmers University of
maintenance hangar staff must decide which components to Technology, has developed a mathematical replacement model
maintain including both LLPs and OC-parts. that aims to determine which components should be replaced at
To replace LLP is relative easy because its remaining life is the actual maintenance task. The model is able to calculate the
deterministic. GKN Aerospace, the original equipment optimum balance between the remaining life of engine
manufacturer for the RM12 engine used by Swedish Gripen components and the costs for each maintenance interval, versus
fighter, has developed a model to calculate the life the cost of components and their replacement [12,13]. The
consumption of life-limited items, called a Life-Tracking model is developed in order to obtain a maintenance plan with
System (LTS) [5, 11]. as few maintenance occurrences as possible while maintaining
sound use of replacement parts, including both new and used,
The accuracy of the life predictions has been improved by with a minimization of the maintenance costs.
reducing one of the most significant uncertainty source in the
life analysis chain that is represented by the uncertainty of the
loads experienced. The main idea is to use the actual data for
each mission flown instead of a standard mission profile. The IV. DIAGNOSTICS AND PROGNOSTICS
reduced uncertainty with LTS provides the opportunity to When considering repairable systems or components, in
reduce safety margins without compromising airworthiness. addition to defining reliability, the function of availability must
The proposed life analysis models reduce the costs associated also be clarified. Reliability is defined as the probability that a
with spare parts, as shown in Figure 3. device per-forms a specific function up to a specific time
interval, in pre-established conditions of use. This concept does
not allow for an interruption in service. In cases where
maintenance is scheduled, this must be carried out in time
Safety factor
Safety factor
with LTS
intervals when the device or component is not in use. In
without LTS repairable systems where the system is unavailable for the time
necessary to effect repairs or maintenance, availability implies
that the system will not be functioning for a given time
interval. Furthermore, availability is the probability of being
Theoretical life
able to function correctly at the required moment, independent
of any previous failure subsequently repaired, and not up to a
Usable life
Usable life
with LTS
determined point in time, as is asserted in the definition of
without LTS reliability. Availability is therefore a more general function that
takes into account both the reliability of a system and
maintenance aspects, and then a return to normal functioning
after a failure. So it is fundamental to evaluate the state of
health of any system in order to optimize both availability and
maintainability and to do this diagnostics and prognostics play
Fig. 3. Safety factor reduction by means Life-Tracking System (LTS) that a key role.
allows to reduce uncertainty [9]

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 “Diagnostics” is the investigation or analysis of the cause; V. CONCLUSIONS
“prognostics” is related to calculate or predict the future system In avionics application one of the most important
state as a result of rational study and analysis of available data. competition factors is the reliability, given that the failure
In terms of the relationship between prognostics and occurrence may leads to a critical state for the functioning of
diagnostics, the latter is the process of detecting and identifying the aircraft. In order to obtain more reliable optimization
a failure mode within a system or subsystem [14]. results several factors should be taken into account. In fact,
Prognosis is defined by ISO (International Organization for different maintenance, prognostics and diagnostics approaches
Standardization) as “the estimation of time to failure and risk are possible with the final aim to optimize both system’s
for one or more existing and future failure modes” [15]. In this availability and safety.
terms, prognostics is also called the “prediction of a system’s As described in the paper, all components involved into
lifetime” as it is a process whose objective is to predict the maintenance in a complex system, such as an aircraft engine,
remaining useful life (RUL) before a failure occurs, given the need to be incorporated, independent of whether they are LLP
current system condition and past operating profile [9]. or OC-parts. Almost all subsystem are composed by a mix of
Several methods exist to monitor the condition of rotary LLPs and OC-parts.
machinery. The most common are the model-based and data- In this context, Life-Tracking System (LTS) approach
driven approaches for diagnosis and prognosis. Each has its allows to reduce uncertainty in the assessment of LLPs part
own advantages and disadvantages, and they are therefore residual life with an optimization of both the safety margins
often used in combination in many applications [14]. and maintenance activities and relative costs.
In this context, LTS represent a valid solution to obtain Considering that that the reliability of the life estimations
much reliable information about the life consumption of the for the complete system is no better than its weakest point, it is
LLPs. As customers will continue to use their engines with the easy to focus the importance of increasing knowledge on how
same flight profiles as before, it is also possible to get very to estimate the remaining life for OC-parts in order to increase
detailed prognostics over how many more cycles individual the knowledge of the remaining life for the complete engine.
LLPs will survive. Using more detailed data regarding life
consumption for the LLPs will improve input information for This leads to put the attention on diagnostic and prognosis on
the mathematical replacement model. Hence, this approach the OC-parts. The list of engine components will then be
leads to more reliable optimization results due to more reliable analyzed in more detail to identify the requirements for
input data. maintenance and the influence of the maintenance duration.
Unfortunately, LTS is notable to calculate the life The next step is to find the balance between the remaining
consumption for the OC-parts, so it is still necessary to life estimated and what is necessary to obtain reliable plans
estimate their remaining life. This aspect needs to be improved from previous maintenance optimization models. This step
(Fig. 4), so that all necessary engine components data can be evaluates prognosis uncertainty and determines how good the
included in the mathematical replacement model. estimates are. It is most important that the remaining life
estimation for OC-parts should lead to an estimation of the
remaining life for each component that can be included into the
Remaining life data reliability replacement model. Life estimates for OC -parts could be
(accuracy) binary, a small range of values, a continuous variable in a
specified range, or even data in an algorithm. This varies from
component to component, but these are questions that should
be focused on to solve the problem of developing better life
Remaining life estimates Remaining life estimates estimates for the OC -parts in an aircraft engine.
Best optimization for OC‐parts with for individual
results classification method components
improvement

Improvement
gained by LTS
Need for

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