HUMS and CBM in the Civil Helicopter Market

Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) for rotorcraft have been available since the early 1990s. While HUMS installation and utilization has recently surged in the military environment, driven in large part by the US Department of Defense's CBM+ initiative, commercial applications have progressed at a much slower rate. This paper reviews the challenges that are faced in the application of HUMS and services built around HUMS in the civil helicopter market. Some of the key characteristics of this market that set it apart from the military market are the often small fleet size per operator, starting with individual aircraft, the decentralized maintenance by diverse maintenance service partners, and the constant strong industry competition concerning cost and performance. One of the main challenges in promoting HUMS in the civil helicopter market lies in providing a cost-benefit justification. An approach for monitoring capability analysis and benefit assessment is presented. The approach is based on the analysis of various types of information from sources both within the design organization and from the field.