Lead the fleet: a structured approach to predicting helicopter failures

Lead the fleet (LTF) provides the U.S. Army with an opportunity to capture aircraft usage information that can be correlated with anomalies and failures to establish meaningful usage-related safety and logistical trends. As a minimum, LTF monitors and records the amount of time each airframe and each dynamic component is exposed to damaging flight regimes and evaluates the resultant accumulated damage. The basic parameters required to identify these flight regimes include gross weight, airspeed, altitude, roll angle, vertical acceleration, and ground-air-ground cycles. This paper reports the approach being implemented to relate helicopter system failures and maintenance actions to the actual operational usage history.