The US Department of Defense initiative for propulsion safety and affordable readiness (P-SAR) has been engaged by all three services as a means to mitigate the operational and environmental hazards to aircraft propulsion system integrity, dependability and life cycle cost in military service. This paper focuses on the turbo-machinery of military propulsion systems and addresses the options available to manage turbo-machinery health and life cycle cost.' Three primary turbo-machinery integrity and performance degraders are identified: foreign object damage, erosion and corrosion, and high cycle fatigue due to aero-elastic response of turbo-machine blades & vanes. A variety of sensors have been proposed as measures to monitor and mitigate the hazards created by such degradation. Many of these were developed as tools for use in component models & design verification, such as non-intrusive stress measurement systems [NSMS] - an indirect means to supplement direct on-blade strain measurements. Others tools have been defined specifically for in service monitoring, such as the use of miniature radar to detect blade motion. This paper follows a systems engineering analysis identifying alternative functional hazard mitigations and a qualitative reliability centered maintenance (RCM) view to assess alternative approaches to mitigation of each hazard. Finally, synergies across the three priority degraders are considered to recommended topics for research.
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