Aircraft Hydraulic System Fault Finding and Troubleshooting Using On-Line Particle Counters

摘要

Maintaining and monitoring integrity of systems play an essential role in costs involved in maintaining the availability of single aircraft as well as the whole fleet. Integrity of the hydraulic system can be monitored by observing particle quantity of hydraulic fluid. During recent years, real time on-line or in-line particle counting sensors have developed to be accurate and reliable measuring instruments for particle quantity. Their main advantage to traditional off-line measurement methods their smaller vulnerability to sampling errors. On-line and in-line methods can also provide particle analysis faster than offline methods, which provides a possibility to measure dynamically changing particle quantity. Continuous online measurement also gives other benefits such as aid for fault finding, which is known to be very difficult and time consuming task in complex hydraulic systems. This paper presents experiences on the fault finding and troubleshooting of a modern jet fighter hydraulic system using on-line condition monitoring system integrated in the portable hydraulic test stand. Online sensors are used to measure chemical quality and particle quantity of fluid.