Seeded Fault Testing Lessons Learned For Condition Based Maintenance Systems On Us Army Aircraft

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight on lessons learned by the Aviation Engineering Directorate (AED) Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) office in the management of Seeded Fault Testing (SFT). The Army has spent over ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars to refine a practical approach to implementing CBM and is pioneering end-user benefits from CBM. At this time roughly half the Army's helicopter fleet is equipped with monitoring systems. Maintenance guidance is based on the condition or status of the equipment instead of specified calendar or time based limits such as Remaining Useful Life (RUL) or Time Before Overhaul (TBO) while preserving the system baseline risk. One of the ways to implement CBM is by the use of SFT. This paper will present some general guidance to follow to minimize the risks associated with conducting seeded fault (SF) and Endurance Testing to facilitate CBM implementation to Army aircraft