Failure Rate Estimation for Current Inventory

A new technique is proposed to include consideration of inventory data in the determination of aircraft system failure rates per 100,000 hours. In many cases, such as fatigue, component reliability decreases with flight time. As a result, system failure rates estimated based on assuming that all components reach the published retirement interval are conservative. Premature inventory losses can occur prior to the established fatigue retirement interval for various reasons, and proper consideration of these losses will improve the precision of aircraft system failure rate estimations used to develop system safety risk assessments. In fact, the predicted failure rates could decrease significantly and result in lower life cycle costs. However, inventory database issues related to legacy data corruption and inadequate reporting rate must be addressed prior to practical implementation of the proposed technique on a widespread basis. It should be noted that this method has applicability in the area of remediation.