Advanced Technology National Research Center

The age of the world\´s commercial aircraft fleet has increased dramatically over the past five decades, and the burden of maintaining aircraft with high service and high cycle times is a major challenge for the economic and technical capabilities of all aircraft operators. This fact has elevated maintenance costs for the older aircraft on an ever-increasing exponential spiral. Our objective is the routine application of advanced non-destructive inspection (NDI) techniques for all the aging fleet. For that matter we are recommending re-establishing and modernizing the Sacramento Air Logistics Center. This Center will be operated by the University of California at Davis, and will be known as the "National Research Center" (NRC) at McClellan Park. The NRC in reality is a partnership made up of UC Davis, NASA, the US Forest Service and a number of private companies. The facility will be used to monitor the health of intact aircraft, individual parts and by manufactures and owner/operators to observe the aging characterizes based on the aircraft\´s use and the application of material sciences. The end result is a significant reduction in maintenance and (re)manufacturing costs to industry and a significant leap forward in safety for the aircraft operators. These advanced facilities will shortly become the University of California, Davis\´ property (Scott, 2005).