Bell Helicopter Teams With Army To Advance CBM Technology

Defense Daily, April 9, 2008

Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT] and the Army Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) are teaming to advance the state-of-the-art for Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) Technologies.

Bell will begin testing various elements of this system later this year with the program targeted to complete in 2010.

The Bell team includes risk-sharing partners Honeywell [HON] and Goodrich [GR], in addition to a variety of internationally recognized universities, small businesses, and consultants.

The goal of the advanced technology program is to demonstrate an integrated set of diagnostic, prognostic and system health assessment technologies to support Army Operations Support and Sustainment Technology (OSST) objectives and enable transition to a CBM based philosophy.

"The first step of successful Condition Based Maintenance is collecting relevant aircraft data," Mike Blake, Bell's executive vice president of customer solutions, said. "The objective of this cost share program is to mature emerging sensor technologies and fuse them into an integrated CBM solution. This will greatly reduce the maintenance burden on our soldiers while enhancing safety throughout the fleet."

The overarching goal of CBM is to set in place maintenance processes, technologies, and capabilities that improve operational availability and reduce the overall maintenance burden.

Some examples of the technologies Bell and AATD are developing are corrosion detection, electrical component prognostics, fatigue damage detection, and various rotor system prognostics.

"One of the most significant challenges of CBM is determining what data is really needed and how often," Steven Woolston, Bell's director of Customer Support Technology, said. "The beauty of this program is that we will learn how to integrate and fuse this data to deliver a more efficient CBM system to our customers."

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