Helicopter rotor track and balance (RT&B) procedure is a maintenance process performed in order tominimize the helicopter vibrations. During this process several flights are being preformed and adjustments arebeing made. The “heart” of this process is an algorithm that performs numeric optimization based on the vibration datarecorded in flight and on the ground, in order to recommend optimal adjustments (weights, pitch links, sweep or tabsadjustments) necessary to converge to the allowed vibration level in all of the flight regimes.Changes in the aircraft, different flight configurations, different aircraft operation and “aging” of the aircraft allresult in the fact that RT&B process in AH-1S are not optimal and the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) for thisprocess is too long, resulting in a decrease of readiness for mission (RFM).The IAF has initiated a research activity in order to investigate the correlation between the sensitivitycoefficients currently configured in the algorithm and the actual coefficients based on calculations from flight tests.The research will enable the IAF to adapt and change the algorithm in order to optimize RT&B procedures – usingsensitivity coefficients that best represent the correlation between the adjustments that are preformed and theexpected aircraft response to those adjustments. The IAF has decided to conduct several flight tests inorder to investigate the correlation between the configured coefficients and the actual one.After collecting those coefficients the IAF found differences between the currently configured coefficients inRT&B algorithm and those measured during the flight tests.According to the above mentioned results, the IAF intends to update the newly measured RT&B sensitivity coefficients.
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