Operational data Processing and Techniques for Innovative MAINTenance (OPTIMAINT)

The road to Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM) in the aerospace industry is a long and arduous one. To accelerate the journey, a collaborative research program called OPTIMAINT (Operational data Processing and Techniques for Innovative MAINTenance) was established in Singapore in 2008. Such a unique partnership involving an end user the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF), the original equipment manufacturer Eurocopter (EC) with Eurocopter South East Asia (ESEA), and its corporate research entity European Aeronautic Defence and Space company (EADS) Innovation Works (IW), provides an unprecedented opportunity of sharing a common vision while acquiring invaluable insights into the many challenges of achieving CBM. The project aims to demonstrate the ability of HUMS (Health and Usage Monitoring Systems) to cover all degradation modes for selected components. Thus, fault detectability is at the heart of OPTIMAINT: a significant part of the project is dedicated to data investigation, data processing and degradation/anomaly detection. This paper covers the key steps of the ongoing project and shares some promising results obtained from historical HUMS data through the use of statistical and data mining techniques.