Report is recommended to be between 1,800 to 2,200 words, excluding the cover page and appendices.

(a) Discuss the latest industrial trend in applying the following maintenance concepts on commercial aircraft systems. Illustrate your discussion with specific, relevant aircraft examples.
(i) On-condition Maintenance
(50 marks)
(ii) Prognostic Maintenance & Health Monitoring
(50 marks)

Hint*

(“on-condition” maintenance. Early failure signals attributes such as vibrations, cracks, particles in oil, temperature, noise, viscosity, colour, etc. are signs of early phases of failure, before the actual failure occurs. Many technologies have been developed to monitor such failure characteristics. These include devices such as vibration analysis, X-ray, ultrasonic, infrared thermography, oil analysis, acoustic emission, etc.)

(Prognostics is an engineering discipline focused on predicting the time at which a system or a component will no longer perform its intended function. This lack of performance is most often a failure beyond which the system can no longer be used to meet desired performance.)