Monday, December 3, 2007 - 3:00 PM

A Corrosion Related Reliability Centred Maintenance Pilot Program for the Royal Australian Air Force C-130 J Model Hercules Aircraft

Bruce R. W. Hinton, DSTO; Sammuel Miah, Aviations System Management

Experience has shown that with the aging of aircraft fleets corrosion is increasing, with a significant impact on aircraft availability and cost of ownership. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has traditionally managed corrosion through ‘ad-hoc’ repairs, reactionary maintenance programming and the adjustment of maintenance inspection intervals based on historical data and anecdotal evidence, which are linked to fatigue cracking inspections as part of the Safety by Inspection process. Dedicated corrosion inspections have been based typically upon a ‘find and grind’ policy. This type of reactionary maintenance practice manages corrosion by treating it as the symptom i.e. the functional failed state, while ignoring the root causes that allow corrosion to develop, i.e. the potential failed state. This paper outlines a pilot corrosion related reliability centred maintenance  program developed for the RAAF C-130J-30 Hercules aircraft. The program aims to develop the necessary tools and information to allow inspections for the precursors to corrosion rather than the “functional failed state”. Following the USN NAVAIR Standard 00-25-403 and documented USN experiences with the EA-6B Prowler aircraft, an RCM analysis of 32 candidate corrosion inspection zones on the C-130J-30 was carried out, plus 16 additional recommendations to improve flight line maintenance inspections and aircraft turn around times. Through a failure modes and effects analysis , an inspection interval was developed for each location based on an assessment of the time to failure of coatings and a corrosion rate associated with the particular local operating environment. A series of Potential Failure Mode Indicators (PFMIs) were developed to allow maintenance staff to take preventative maintenance actions before corrosion actually develops. The paper will outline how these inspection intervals, PFMIs and the maintenance actions were developed, and discuss examples of particular component inspection sheets.

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See more of The 2007 Tri-Service Corrosion Conference (December 3-7, 2007)