Aging Military Aircraft Landscape

Aging Military Aircraft Landscape: A Case for End-of-Life Fleet Optimization

Newcamp, Jeffrey (TU Delft Air Transport & Operations)
Verhagen, W.J.C. (TU Delft Air Transport & Operations)
Curran, R. (TU Delft Air Transport & Operations)

2016

Military aircraft fleets are continuing to age despite increased structural integrity concerns and rising maintenance costs. Aircraft are not being replaced or retired in large numbers but are instead having their lives extended beyond their original design service lives. Because aging aircraft cost more to maintain, this additional burden on air forces is a forcing function for smarter approaches to enhanced structural health monitoring. As data recorder technology has improved and recording capacity has increased, structural health monitoring tools have become more important in understanding aircraft life. Accrued historical data present opportunities for end-of-life fleet optimization. This paper provides a thorough review of the aging aircraft problem and suggests a direction for future end-of-life fleet optimization research. The suggestions include the alteration of aircraft utilization, optimization for aircraft basing and the prediction of structural fatigue, all of which can enable the realization of fleet-wide cost savings.

Aircraft Monitoring
Fleet Optimization
End-of-Life
Aging Aircraft

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:17ab2c88-9b8b-4ee7-a9b9-875a7d1978c8

8th European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring: Bilbao, Spain

8th European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, 2016-07-05 → 2016-07-08, Bilbao, Spain

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2016 Jeffrey Newcamp, W.J.C. Verhagen, R. Curran