Reliability Centered Maintenance Analysis of the UH-60 Drive System

The purpose of this paper is to describe the process by which a Reliability Centered Maintenance analysis of the UH-60 tail drive system to identify improvements to current maintenance practices. This paper will address data collection efforts undertaken prior to facilitated working group meetings. This data, which summarized current reliability performance, cost, and maintenance requirements, insured working group decisions were based on experience and empirical data, while preventing the group from investing effort in those failure modes that did not impact cost, maintenance, or reliability. The results of this analysis provided recommendations that further exploit Health and Usage Monitoring System (HUMS) capabilities while improving maintenance for non-HUMS units. This analysis identified three specific recommendations. These recommendations include extending Army Oil Analysis Program sampling intervals for the Intermediate and Tail Rotor Gearbox, exploiting HUMS vibration monitoring capability to identify elongated bolt holes, and extending the inspection interval of the torque check for the inboard retention plate bolts.