An integrated assessment of safety and efficiency of aircraft maintenance strategies using agent-based modelling and stochastic Petri nets

An integrated assessment of safety and efficiency of aircraft maintenance strategies using agent-based modelling and stochastic Petri nets

Lee, J. (TU Delft Air Transport & Operations)
Mitici, M.A. (TU Delft Air Transport & Operations)

2020-10-01

Aircraft maintenance is key for safe and efficient aircraft operations. While most studies propose cost-efficient maintenance strategies, the safety and efficiency of these strategies need to be quantified. This paper proposes a formal framework to assess the safety and efficiency of maintenance strategies by means of agent-based modelling, stochastically and dynamically coloured Petri nets, and Monte Carlo simulation. We model an end-to-end aircraft maintenance process, considering several maintenance stakeholders. We apply our framework for aircraft landing gear brakes, and use a Gamma process to model the degradation trends of the brakes. The numerical results show that applying data-driven strategies reduces the number of inspections by 36%, while maintaining the same level of safety as in the case of traditional time-based maintenance strategies. Furthermore, in order to discuss the possibility to substitute all inspections by sensor monitoring, an advanced data-driven strategy using prognostics is considered. Overall, our proposed framework is generic and can readily be applied to assess the safety and efficiency of the maintenance of other aircraft components and maintenance strategies.

Aircraft maintenance
Gamma process
Landing gear brake
Safety
Simulation
Stochastically and dynamically coloured Petri nets

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:28b39202-0d64-4402-b7ae-0683e1ee0374

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2020.107052

0951-8320

Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 202

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2020 J. Lee, M.A. Mitici