Aircraft Scheduled Structural Maintenance Programs: Current Philosophies and Methods in the United States and Their Applicability to the Royal Australian Air Force

摘要

This thesis concentrates on determining the status of maintenance philosophy development and, in particular, on structural maintenance methodologies. An extensive treatment of the historical development of structural characteristics and design methodologies which effect structural maintenance requirements is given. Additional support for current philosophies and methodologies is obtained from interviews with both commercial and military practitioners employed in managing structural maintenance programs. These results, together with the extensive literature review lead to the conclusion that operators in the United States of America all subscribe to the MSG/RCM doctrines and use the structural maintenance methodology detailed in the MSG-3 document. A comparison between these methods and those used by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) reveals that there is little philosophical difference between the two, however the methodologies vary considerably. The RAAF's procedures are based on MSG-3's predecessor document MSG-2 which did not have a dedicated structural maintenance methodology. (KR)