A Systems Engineering Approach to Integrated Structural Health Monitoring for Aging Aircraft

<p>The United States Air Force and many of its Coalition partners have extended the original service life of some of their aging aircraft due to fiscal constraints. This life extension often requires increased periodic and in-depth inspections increasing maintenance costs and resulting in longer periods of aircraft downtime. An integrated structural health monitoring system (ISHMS) for aging aircraft may reduce the cur- rent inspection burden and thus decrease costs and system downtime. This thesis developed a generic systems engineering process to describe the system definition for an ISHMS installed on a non-specific aging aircraft. The system definition developed in this thesis followed the Vee Model for systems development and serves as a starting point for future research and/or development efforts in this field. User analysis user requirements system requirements and some Department of Defense Architecture Framework system architectures formed the basis for the generic systems engineering process presented. Furthermore mathematical simulations compared the failure rate and number of inspections for a scenario without an ISHMS to a scenario with an ISHMS. This simplified analysis demonstrated that a structural health monitoring system for aging aircraft may have promising benefits with respect to both safety improvements and decreased maintenance costs.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p><br>