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If it ain't broke, don't fix it: Optimizing the predictive aircraft maintenance schedule with Remaining Useful Life prognostics

de Pater, I.I. (author)

Predictive aircraft maintenance is a maintenance strategy that aims to reduce the number of failures, the number of inspections, the number of maintenance tasks and the aircraft maintenance costs. Aircraft are equipped with health monitoring systems, where sensors continuously measure the condition of the aircraft components. In predictive...

doctoral thesis 2024

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Alarm-based predictive maintenance scheduling for aircraft engines with imperfect Remaining Useful Life prognostics

de Pater, I.I. (author), Reijns, Arthur (author), Mitici, M.A. (author)

The increasing availability of condition monitoring data for aircraft components has incentivized the development of Remaining Useful Life (RUL) prognostics in the past years. However, only few studies consider the integration of such prognostics into maintenance planning. In this paper we propose a dynamic, predictive maintenance scheduling...

journal article 2022

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Multi-objective design of aircraft maintenance using Gaussian process learning and adaptive sampling

Lee, J. (author), Mitici, M.A. (author)

Aircraft maintenance design aims to identify strategies that render the aircraft reliable for flight in a cost-efficient manner. These are often conflicting objectives. Moreover, existing studies on maintenance design often limit themselves to only one type of maintenance strategy, overlooking other potentially dominating designs. We propose...

journal article 2022

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A novel decision support system for optimizing aircraft maintenance check schedule and task allocation

Deng, Q. (author), Santos, Bruno F. (author), Verhagen, W.J.C. (author)

Modern aircraft have thousands of parts, systems, and components that need to be recurrently inspected or replaced. To keep the fleet airworthy, maintenance planners have to schedule the maintenance checks for each aircraft and the associated tasks. In practice, these two complex problems are solved following the experience of planners,...

journal article 2021

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Predictive Aircraft Maintenance: Modeling and Analysis Using Stochastic Petri Nets

Lee, J. (author), Mitici, M.A. (author)

Predictive aircraft maintenance is a complex process, which requires the modeling of the stochastic degradation of aircraft systems, as well as the dynamic interactions between the stakeholders involved. In this paper, we show that the stochastically and dynamically colored Petri nets (SDCPNs) are able to formalize the predictive aircraft...

conference paper 2021

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Online model-based remaining-useful-life prognostics for aircraft cooling units using time-warping degradation clustering

Mitici, M.A. (author), de Pater, I.I. (author)

Remaining-useful-life prognostics for aircraft components are central for efficient and robust aircraft maintenance. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end approach to obtain online, model-based remaining-useful-life prognostics by learning from clusters of components with similar degradation trends. Time-series degradation measurements are...

journal article 2021

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Robust Long-Term Aircraft Heavy Maintenance Check Scheduling Optimization under Uncertainty

van der Weide, Tim (author), Deng, Q. (author), Santos, Bruno F. (author)

Long-term heavy maintenance check schedules are crucial in the aviation industry since airlines need them to prepare the required maintenance tools, workforce, and aircraft spare parts. However, most airlines adopt a manual approach to plan the heavy maintenance check schedules in current practice. This manual process relies on the experience of...

journal article 2021

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A web-based decision support system for aircraft dispatch and maintenance

Koornneef, H. (author), Verhagen, W.J.C. (author), Curran, R. (author)

Aircraft dispatch involves determining the optimal dispatch option when an aircraft experiences an unexpected failure. Currently, maintenance technicians at the apron have limited access to support information and finding the right information in extensive maintenance manuals is a time-consuming task, often leading to technically induced...

journal article 2021

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A bin packing approach to solve the aircraft maintenance task allocation problem

Witteman, Max (author), Deng, Q. (author), Santos, Bruno F. (author)

This paper addresses the scheduling of aircraft maintenance tasks that must be carried out in multiple maintenance checks to keep a fleet of aircraft airworthy. The allocation of maintenance tasks to maintenance opportunities, also known as the task allocation problem (TAP), is a complex combinatorial problem that needs to be solved daily by...

journal article 2021

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Aircraft maintenance check scheduling using reinforcement learning

Andrade, Pedro (author), Silva, Catarina (author), Ribeiro, Bernardete (author), Santos, Bruno F. (author)

This paper presents a Reinforcement Learning (RL) approach to optimize the long-term scheduling of maintenance for an aircraft fleet. The problem considers fleet status, maintenance capacity, and other maintenance constraints to schedule hangar checks for a specified time horizon. The checks are scheduled within an interval, and the goal is...

journal article 2021

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

Lee, J. (author), Mitici, M.A. (author)

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,...

journal article 2020

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Deducing the physical characteristics of an impactor from the resultant damage on aircraft structures

Massart, Philippe F.R. (author), Dhanisetty, V.S.V. (author), Kassapoglou, C. (author), Verhagen, W.J.C. (author), Curran, R. (author)

This paper proposes an analytical model that uses historical damage dimension data to deduce physical impactor characteristics (size and energy) that has caused a certain resulting damage. Maintenance tasks occur in operations due to impact, however the source of the damage caused in the event remains in most cases unknown. Consequently, by...

journal article 2020

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A practical dynamic programming based methodology for aircraft maintenance check scheduling optimization

Deng, Q. (author), Santos, Bruno F. (author), Curran, R. (author)

This paper presents a practical dynamic programming based methodology to optimize the long-term maintenance check schedule for a fleet of heterogeneous aircraft. It is the first time that the long-term aircraft maintenance check schedule is optimized, integrating different check types in a single schedule solution. The proposed methodology...

journal article 2020

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A decision support framework and prototype for aircraft dispatch assessment

Koornneef, H. (author), Verhagen, W.J.C. (author), Curran, R. (author)

When an aircraft experiences an unexpected issue during flight operations, a technician determines whether the aircraft can safely perform the next flight. This operational decision process - known as dispatch assessment - has to happen within limited available time between aircraft arrival and departure. Currently, technicians face two main...

journal article 2020

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Impact damage repair decision-making for composite structures: Predicting impact damage on composite aircraft using aluminium data

Dhanisetty, V.S.V. (author)

There is a growth in the use of composites for the new generation of wide-body aircraft such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350. This shift from using aluminium as the primary material is motivated by the benefits of using composites in design, manufacturing and operations. Composites offer the aircraft manufacturer the ability to create more...

doctoral thesis 2019

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A Mobile decision support system for aircraft dispatch

Koornneef, H. (author), Verhagen, W.J.C. (author), Curran, R. (author)

Delays are costly to airlines in both money and image. A significant number of delays is caused by unexpected technical failures of aircraft systems or components. These failures, if not dealt with efficiently, can cause disruptions in the flight schedule and network. The annual costs of these type of disruptions add up to an estimated cost...

conference paper 2019

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Identification of Strategic Maintenance

Narayanan, Prasobh (author), Verhagen, W.J.C. (author), Dhanisetty, V.S.V. (author)

Airline Maintenance and Engineering (M&E) organizations face accidental damages on their fleet of aircraft as part of daily practice. As this type of damage is stochastic in nature, the approach towards repairing accidental damage is reactive in practice. However, it is possible to predict future long-term (strategic) demand for maintenance...

conference paper 2018

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Trans-Disciplinary Systems as Complex Systems

Wognum, Nel (author), Verhagen, W.J.C. (author), Stjepandic, J (author)

The system concept is a widely-used concept in research and practice. Already in the 50s of the previous century, a community was created to investigate interrelationships between domains and create a theory surpassing and comparing domains. The General Systems Theory (GST) community has tried to come up with...

conference paper 2017

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A multi-criteria decision making framework for aircraft dispatch assessment

Koornneef, H. (author), Verhagen, W.J.C. (author), Curran, R. (author)

The aircraft dispatch decision is a complex analysis based on many factors related to airworthiness regulations, aircraft health status, resource availability at current and future stop(s) and operational preferences of the operator. Within the turnaround time (TAT) a decision has to be made whether the aircraft can return to service, defects...

conference paper 2017

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Component-Based Data-Driven Predictive Maintenance to Reduce Unscheduled Maintenance Events

Verhagen, W.J.C. (author), Curran, R. (author), de Boer, L.W.M. (author)

Costs associated with unscheduled and preventive maintenance can contribute significantly to an airline's expenditure. Reliability analysis can help to identify and plan for maintenance events. Reliability analysis in industry is often limited to statistically based approaches that incorporate failure times as...

conference paper 2017