Usage Monitoring of Helicopter Gearboxes with ADS-B Flight Data
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Usage Monitoring of Helicopter Main Gearboxes
1.2. Access to Data and Reality Gap
2. Usage Monitoring Methodology
2.1. ADS-B Flight Data
2.2. Performance Model
- Since only groundspeed can be extracted from the available flight data, we assume that it is equivalent to TAS, neglecting wind, etc.
- As we focus on HEMS flights, the helicopter mass is assumed to be close to its maximum allowed takeoff mass (MTOM) due to the amount of equipment and a standard crew of three persons (pilot, emergency doctor and paramedic). It is not possible to infer from the ADS-B data whether a patient is on board. We thus assume the mass to be 150 kg less than its MTOM, which results to 2830 kg for an Airbus H135.
- We assume a standard barometer pressure setting of 1013 hPa to calculate the ambient pressure from the ADS-B altitude.
- Since the vertical rate within ADS-B is relatively coarse (intervals of 64 ft/min) and has a high variance due to momentarily extreme peaks, it is calculated with the forward differential coefficient of altitude.
- The flight profile data are smoothed with a moving average. For this, we used the Matlab function smoothdata with a SmoothingFactor of .
2.3. Derivation of the UM Indicator
3. Long-Term Flight Data Set
3.1. HEMS in Germany
3.2. Data Acquisition and Filtering
3.3. Filtering and Overview of the Data
4. Application and Results
4.1. Description of the Example Use Case
4.2. Application of the UM Methodology and Discussion
4.3. Discussion
5. Conclusions and Future Work
Author Contributions
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
Abbreviations
ADS-B | Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast |
DUH | Dual-Use-Helicopter |
FC | Flight Cycles |
FH | Flight Hours |
HEMS | Helicopter Emergency Medical Services |
HM | Health Monitoring |
HUMS | Health and Usage Monitoring System |
ITH | Intensive Care Transport Helicopter |
MGB | Main Gearbox |
MRO | Maintenance Repair and Overhaul |
RTH | Rescue Transport Helicopter |
TBO | Time Between Overhaul |
UI | Usage Indicator |
UM | Usage Monitoring |
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HEMS Type | EC135/H135 | EC145/H145 |
---|---|---|
RTH | 49 | 6 |
ITH | 1 | 12 |
DUH | 1 | 10 |
Total | 51 | 28 |
Registration | Operator | Station | Location | Model Type | Entry into Service |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
D-HXCB | ADAC | Christoph 31 (CHX31) | Berlin | Airbus EC135 T3 | 2020 |
D-HRTA | DRF | Christoph 45 (CHX45) | Friedrichshafen | Airbus EC135 T3 | 2017 |
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Hünemohr, D.; Litzba, J.; Rahimi, F. Usage Monitoring of Helicopter Gearboxes with ADS-B Flight Data. Aerospace 2022, 9, 647. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9110647
Hünemohr D, Litzba J, Rahimi F. Usage Monitoring of Helicopter Gearboxes with ADS-B Flight Data. Aerospace. 2022; 9(11):647. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9110647
Chicago/Turabian StyleHünemohr, David, Jörg Litzba, and Farid Rahimi. 2022. "Usage Monitoring of Helicopter Gearboxes with ADS-B Flight Data" Aerospace 9, no. 11: 647. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9110647