Level 3 Aircraft Integrity Management


NH90 Supportability Data Exchange Aircraft Integrity Management (AIM) provides the operator with a set of NH90 structural integrity and fleet life management tools with a standard reporting facility on operational usage, loads/damage accumulation and lifing of helicopter components.

SDE AIM functionalities provide the user with a series of functionalities, e.g.:

  • to quantify the operational service usage spectrum and to compare this with design assumptions from Industry
  • to monitor and derive fatigue life consumption figures for various components
  • to determine the relation between airframe degradation (cracks, delaminations, corrosion etc.) and operational usage elements (relatively severe high speed regime, hard landing, heavy weight, underslung loads etc.)
  • to break down missions into separate and subsequent flight events or regimes
  • to construct new, imaginary missions, to estimate future usage (prognostics capability).

For these purposes, SDE AIM receives and stores information on usage from National systems, for example from flight logs, GLIMS and/or from other sources.

Technical content covers:

Usage Statistics

  • altitude, airspeed, weight distributions per tailno.
  • mission administration (c.g. position, p.o.b., location, mtype, role equipment etc.)
  • discretes (FH, no. and type of landings, blade/tail foldings etc.)

Flight Regime Recognition

  • based on physical rules, NLR proprietary software
  • flight-by-flight basis
  • usage comparisons with design, between community etc.

Force Life Management concepts

  • damage indices per component per flight regime
  • ad hoc studies composites, hinges, etc.
  • usage scenario damage prognostics
  • engine cyclic life control
  • PHM, CBM, etc.

Available since February 2013…

As of 13 February 2013, the SDE Level 3 Aircraft Integrity Management service, incl. website and forum is formally up and running!