New standard aviation handbook up for review

By Carlotta Maneice, AMRDEC Public AffairsJune 18, 2015

Condition Based Maintenance System Handbook
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REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. (Jun. 18, 2015) -- The aviation handbook for maintenance monitoring for all U.S. Army aircraft is under revision. The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center's Aviation Engineering Directorate is the Army's proponent for airworthiness.

AED held a four day workshop in June to discuss revisions to the Aeronautical Design Standard Handbook on the Condition Based Maintenance System for Army aircraft (ADS-79E-HDBK) in Huntsville, Ala. More than 100 industry, national and international engineers and scientists attended.

The Aeronautical Design Standard Handbook describes the technical guidance necessary to achieve the U.S. Army CBM goals for U.S. Army manned and unmanned aircraft systems. This handbook is used to ensure Army requirements for sustained airworthiness through maintenance methods are met.

"The Army is moving from Reliability Centered Maintenance to Condition Based Maintenance," said Daniel Wade, AMRDEC Aerospace Engineer. "With this change, aviation requires a safety standard to make sure that the Health and Usage Monitoring System, HUMS, maintains continued airworthiness. Changes to the way we maintain aircraft cannot increase risk to the pilots."

The last day of the workshop was spent discussing HUMS flight criticality. Implementing HUMS as a flight critical system could significantly change the concept of operations for military and commercial industries because it would change the way aircraft are maintained.

"The discussion of transitioning HUMS from an optional piece of equipment to a required piece of equipment was challenging for the attendees," Wade said. "Final guidance was not developed at the workshop for the HUMS to become part of the minimum equipment requirement but instead to provide the Project Managers the information they needed to decide if they want to change the minimum equipment list or not."

The Design Handbook describes elements that enable CBM methodologies, removal criteria of components and actual usage. It is broken into system level guidance for Project Offices and technical guidance for academia and aircraft manufacturers. This handbook will be available for use by all departments and agencies of the Department of Defense once approved by the Army's Aviation Chief Safety Officer.

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The Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center is part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to develop technology and engineering solutions for America's Soldiers.

RDECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command. AMC is the Army's premier provider of materiel readiness -- technology, acquisition support, materiel development, logistics power projection, and sustainment -- to the total force, across the spectrum of joint military operations. If a Soldier shoots it, drives it, flies it, wears it, eats it or communicates with it, AMC provides it.

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