Browse Topic: Maintainability and supportability
As the U.S. Army endeavors to maintain overmatch capability in the global arena, Future Vertical Lift has become a high priority. In a climate that demands a more efficient and affordable acquisition process, it is imperative that structural integrity requirements are maintained as a priority to ensure initial quality, supportability, and maintainability considerations. Therefore, it is paramount that a standard practice be utilized so that structural integrity requirements are clearly understood by the Product Office, the Airworthiness Authority, and the Original Equipment Manufacturer(s). This paper highlights how the MIL-STD-3063 U.S. Army Standard Practice for Rotorcraft Structural Integrity Programs can meet these demands by laying out interrelated functional tasks in a concise manner to allow for decision makers to make sound choices with regards to structural integrity for any new developmental aircraft. The paper also details how the standard practice is being utilized to
ABSTRACT Operations and support cost constitutes nearly 70% of rotorcraft lifecycle cost. When considering new rotorcraft concepts and technology infusion for current concepts, quantitative performance evaluation is undertaken during conceptual design. However, the effect of design decisions on operations and support metrics are typically evaluated qualitatively. Since operation and support costs constitute an overwhelming majority of rotorcraft lifecycle cost, quantitative evaluation of these metrics is required to fully capture the design trade space. To this end, an integrated discrete-event simulation environment is developed to quantify the impact of architectural decisions and subsystem technology infusion on key metrics including the operational availability, system mean time between failures, Maintenance Free Operating Period, repair cost, and maintenance man-hours needed for a given period of operation. Since data needs are immense, it is appropriate to use data from existing
Due to its subjective nature, the concept of value is not one that is easily defined. Marketers often refer to a product's 'value proposition' as an explanation to why an operator should buy a product or use a service. This statement should convince a potential operator that one particular product or service will add more value or better solve a problem than other similar offerings. In the rotorcraft market, this value proposition is often tied to capabilities of the helicopter and is typically defined as a composite metric. This metric is then compared to the acquisition cost to get a sense of helicopter value. Helicopter manufacturer's marketing and sales departments then go to the market and sell the benefits, either in range, take-off weight, reliability, operating cost, etc… One major difference in the value stream of rotorcraft products as compared to typical consumer products is that it is standard for a second-level supplier, in this case the engine manufacturer, to offer its
Items per page:
50
1 – 50 of 74