Methods and Techniques for Analysis of Field Data for Commercial Rotorcraft Components

Rigorous reliability and maintainability engineering practices are staples of military rotorcraft development and production programs. However for many commercial rotorcraft development programs, R&M tends to be a box-checking exercise, due to tighter schedule and budget constraints. Once a commercial rotorcraft program has entered the production and field support phase, reliability engineering often takes a backseat to more reactive practices which involve issue resolution instead of risk prevention. This paper will present a high-level discussion of common reliability engineering methods and techniques for analyzing field data for commercial rotorcraft and components. The intended audience includes product and customer support personnel who may lack the level of technical knowledge and expertise of reliability engineers, but who nonetheless would like a deeper understanding of reliability analysis of field data, so that they can begin planning for the development of new processes and tools to enable them to switch to a more proactive workflow model.