Reliability In Civil Aircraft Maintenance

Reliability of an aircraft,also known as the survival probability, is an important property of the aircraft and is used to measure the performance of an aircraft.It is also an important factor in determining the cost of life period of the aircraft. The principles of realiability engineering and measures of reliability management, when applied in the airline company, can provide technical support and guidlines for maintenance and for making strategic decisions during the maintenance. With the application of realiability theory, the efficiency and quality of the operation can be improved, and the total cost can be reduced accordingly. Currently, the civil aviation is developping rapidly, and the competition of air transportation market is becoming more intensive than ever. Under such circumstances, the application of reliability in the maintenance engineering of civil aircraft is becoming a critical issue for the airplane companies. Based on the data from monitor data of system and components, record of fault, record of component's repair of both Boeing B737-300 and Boeing B767-300 aircrafts, all collected and arranged during real operation of the airlines, and on the study of "application of relibility in civil aviaition companies" during the visits of other airline companies, this thesis provides a study of the application of reliability in the area of maintenance engineering of civil aircrafts. The main study areas are(all data refers to XX Airline Company):1) Research of reliability data of the Boeing aircrafts;2) Research of lifetime distribute of the Boeing 767-300 aircraft system;3) Research of lifetime reliability of the Boeing 767-300 aircraft system;4) Research of lifetime distribute of the Boeing 737-300 aircraft components;5) Research of lifetime reliability of the Boeing 737-300 aircraft components;6) Research on the application of reliability management in the maintenance of civil aircrafts.The main study results are:1) Based on the study of reliability data of Boeing aircrafts, some particular criteria on data were drawn,and fulfilled reliability data of Boeing aircraft's collection.2) The lifetime distribute of the aircraft system of the Boeing 767-300 aircrafts follows the dual-parameter webull distribute.3) For systems of Boeing 767-300 aircrafts, there is no fault kind of quick wear down and constant fault rate, rather, only fault and wear down of early were present.4) The lifetime distribute of the aircraft components of Boeing 737-300 aircrafts follow the dual-parameter or tri-parameter webull distribution.5 )Based on the analysis of lifetime reliability of some typical componentsof the Boeing 737-300 aircraft, a method is proposed to analyse thelifetime reliability of the aircraft components, and thus provides amethod to extract the error patterns of the component.6) Some aspects of the practical application of reliability managementin aircraft maintenance in China is investigated, suggestions areproposed for improvements.