A second aspect is that restoration does not often bring the item back to its initial state
(a restored Item is normally close, but not exactly the same quality of a new item).
This conservatism however is necessary to build robust inspection programmes on the
current fleet level condition monitoring approach. Inspections resulting in ‘no finding’ could
possibly have been deferred on that aircraft, but there is however still potential for findings
on other aircraft triggered by the variation of an individual aircraft’s operational conditions
and occurrences. In other words, effectiveness of the inspection programme is validated by
the ‘no finding’ rate at fleet level - the current fleet level condition monitoring concept.
Switching the global concept to CBM brings maintenance from monitoring fleet
level conditions by inspecting every aircraft of a fleet, to managing the individual
aircraft airworthiness against predetermined safety and economic limits with built-in
monitoring capabilities.
Let’s look into the semantics of such an approach (see figure 2). The on-board system
monitors the relevant parameter over time and as from the initial detection, a prognostic
function provides a status input on the overall condition monitoring system for the structural
item. When the ‘maintenance notification limit’ is reached, the airline’s Maintenance Control
Centre (MCC) is notified by the aircraft system. Maintenance can now start planning the
restoration slot within the ‘maintenance window’ (e.g. packaged together with other
deferred items in a dedicated shop visit) to optimize the aircraft availability. A cockpit
message informs the flight crew and the MCC if the degradation is about to approach an
‘operational limit’, providing a clear status of the individual aircraft’s remaining operational
capabilities (e.g. number of flight cycles/hours before the item needs to be restored),
limitation of the aircraft’s specific capabilities (reduce flight level and/or reduced load), etc.
这是第二个图的说明