AH-64D Apache Longbow Structural Usage Monitoring System (ALB SUMS)

This paper is a summary of the AH-64D Apache Longbow Structural Usage Monitoring System (ALB SUMS). ALB SUMS is a regime recognition type/post flight data processing software system designed for the damage monitoring of the critical life limited components on the AH-64D helicopter. The capabilities, conditions, system interfaces and requirements of ALB SUMS are discussed in this paper. These include component fatigue life evaluation methodology, the integrated data extraction, decompression, filtering and limiting functions; fundamental maneuvers, aircraft configuration and regime recognition algorithm. The discussions are focused on the AH-64D specific data, maneuvers, flight regime and conditions, and the software characteristics. The validation results of the ALB SUMS regime recognition and end-to-end component fatigue life evaluations are also presented in great detail. The goal of the ALB SUMS program is to demonstrate its usage based life calculation method is as conservative as current fatigue methodology, but will result in longer component lives compared to the published component lives.