TAILORING RELIABILITY AND MAINTAINABILITY TO THE HELICOPTER ENVIRONMENT

The development of the SH-2G(A) helicopter for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), afforded a unique opportunity to tailor qualitative and quantitative Reliability and Maintainability (R&M) checklists and tradeoff analysis tools for a Naval helicopter. From the definition of moisture resistant electrical connectors to quantifying vibration and temperature levels of mission equipment bays, the SH-2G(A) program focused on maximizing R&M for the maritime helicopter environment. To assist engineers in the early development cycle of the helicopter design, R&M developed a qualitative Helicopter Maintainability Checklist, which provided the engineers with a valuable tool for evaluating the Maintainability effectiveness of their designs. Another qualitative tradeoff tool was also developed to consider Reliability, Maintainability, Packaging, Handling & Transportation (PHS&T) and Operations & Support (O&S) cost in early tradeoffs of competing design alternatives before quantitative data were available. Use of the Integrated Product Team (IPT) concept provided an excellent framework for improved communication of R&M practices to designers and planners. R&M also took on a leadership role in equipment placement to focus on maintainability and to use reliability statistics to determine mission equipment locations. The results, coupled with other R&M improvements, are expected to significantly enhance mission success rates, availability and Total Ownership Cost (TOC). This paper describes some of the techniques developed specifically for this program and their potential for application to other helicopter programs