ENHANCEMENT OF TOTAL TECHNICAL LIFE OF AERO PLANES

Abstract

Government of India spends most of its income towards strengthening the Army, Air Force and Navy. Out of the amount spent for this, about 80% of money is spent on technology advancement and maintenance. We are coming in particular now about the Air Force and its fighter jets along with other flying machines as well. Taking Mirage-2000 as an instance, the complete project has been planned to be carried out. The total technical life i.e., effective flying time for a fighter plane is generally around 5000 h of flying/25 years approximately. In between, there can be services done at periodic intervals. Means, it will be permitted to fly up to 2000 h, then servicing can be done with which further flying can be permitted. The point here is, even if a flight has not flown for 2000 h, but reached 12 years of time frame, it has to be serviced, which is definitely under utilization of the machine. Also a particular flight can be flown for 2000 h. well before time, say 8 years; even then the servicing has to be carried out. A flight might have been subjected to tough flying (G-Conditions) conditions in a short span of time. In such case, it undergoes tough wear and tear through which more fatigue is also possible. In this case this machine has to be given more attention as it has been used under extreme conditions. On the other side of the coin, for the same flying hours, another flight which had flown under straight/study conditions will also get the same treatment. It is not fair to treat a guy who is working hard and a guy who has not done that! Few researchers have worked on understanding and even proposing fault diagnositcs. But, there is a lot more to do in cost savings point of view. This study aims at bringing a solution, which has an embedded system in place which would fetch all the critical information during flight and with which optimum usage can be obtained and thereby increasing the effective flying time of the flight through which we get better results economically, technically and avoiding over maintenance. This will eventually find out a way to exploit the aircraft more effectively with cutting down the unnecessary cost.