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Aircraft in the United States are aging, and in an effort to save money and resources a program on aging aircraft is being supported by various branches of the service through the Texas Center for Applied Technology (TCAT). Several B52’s, for example, have grandchildren of the original pilots flying the same plane.
Four mechanical engineering faculty are involved in several projects to save these old planes. The faculty are Charles Bollfrass, Richard Griffin, Reza Langari and Alex Parlos. Amine Benzerga of aerospace engineering also works on parts of the project.
Parlos and Langari are developing technology for condition monitoring and prognostics to aid in identifying likely failures and provide a warning before such failures actually occur. The project uses existing sensors and data collection available through Integrated Vehicle Health Monitoring (IVHM) to enhance the capability of transition from incipient fault diagnosis to fault prognosis. The ability to anticipate failures and deal with them during scheduled maintenance would be beneficial.
Bollfrass and Benzerga are working on another project to examine metal spalling, fretting or galling that are often invoked as the reason for rejecting two-piece horizontal hinge pins on a helicopter.
A third project involving Bollfrass and Richard Griffin is concerned with the corrosion of a magnesium rotor gearbox housing for the main rotor on a helicopter. Since magnesium is a very active material, the rotor gearboxes are coated. Currently, the initial anodic coating uses hexavalent chromium, which is environmentally undesirerable. Bollfrass and Griffin are examining the effects of an environmentally friendlier coating on Mg alloys. A series of corrosion and fatigue tests are being conducted to help evaluate the performance of the new coating.
Dr. Richard Griffin with magnesium
rotor gearbox housing for the main
rotor on a helicopter.
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