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Turbine Engine Sustainment Initiative

Period of Performance:  July 2001 – August 2004

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Principal Investigator: David Stubbs
University of Dayton Research Institute
300 College Park
Dayton, OH 45469-0120
Phone: 937-229-4756
Fax: 937-229-3712
Email: stubbs@flyernet.udayton.edu


In 1983 the USAF instituted a new engine-disk maintenance and remaining life prediction philosophy, known as Retirement For Cause or RFC. The RFC philosophy requires that critical aircraft engine rotating disks be inspected for indications of impending failure instead of automatic replacement on a time-based schedule. The F-15, C-17, F-16 use of RFC for aircraft turbine engine disks, regarded as one of the premier success stories of USAF depot maintenance is estimated to have saved $1 billion since its inception in 1983.

Unfortunately, Science and Technology (S&T) budget cuts have prevented AFRL from fully supporting the Sustainment and advancement of engine material research, life prediction methods, engine monitoring methods, inspection technologies, information management systems, and maintenance practices.  These S&T budget cuts have caused depot facilities such as OC-ALC to remain dependent on technology that was, for the most part, developed in the early 1980s - and, ultimately has lowered USAF aircraft readiness levels.

This lack of S&T funding - together with the existing gap in transitioning newer technology to support turbine engine disk maintenance, if allowed to continue - is estimated to cost the USAF an additional $750 million by the year 2014 for fighter aircraft alone.  Considerable technology exists today that can, if transitioned, provide significant cost savings to OC-ALC without further technological development.

Under this Contractual Engineering Task, "Turbine Engine Sustainment Initiative", UDRI will conduct an eight-task, team-based approach to improved the efficiency, throughput, and reliability of engine component inspections at OC-ALC and to create new inspection systems and technologies for inspection needs currently not being addressed.  UDRI will be the prime contractor with overall responsibility for establishing and maintaining technical and managerial direction.  The other team members, who will be subcontractors to UDRI, are American Robot Corporation, Karta Technologies, UniWest and Veridian, all having experience in supporting USAF engine NDI programs.  Assistance by General Electric Aircraft Engine and Pratt & Whitney also will be provided through subcontract arrangements.

This effort is managed through UDRI's Turbine Engine Support Center (TESC) under the direction of Mr. David Stubbs.  Managing the proposed effort through TESC will help preserve the USAF investment in the RFC philosophy and associated technologies, and support the future growth of those technologies and their applications.  All efforts will be conducted in an open-architecture management environment that will have numerous participants and vendors.  UDRI will ensure that:  (1) all activities will have direct relationships with material life prediction requirements: (2) the RFC philosophy will continue and broaden; and (3) there will be open competition for system hardware, software, and scan-plan development.  It is UDRI's belief that results derived from these efforts, once verified for accuracy, will benefit all who are involved in turbine engine maintenance and associated NDI activities.  Thus, it is UDRI's intent to make all technical information developed during the program (within applicable release constraints) publicly available to the engine inspection community.

Eight tasks are planned for the program that will accomplish the following:

  • Embedded-defect detection capabilities will result from the development of an advanced, automated, ultrasonic system.

  • Improved reliability of inspection systems will result from improvements in reliability analysis, correlating eddy-current inspection-system process control with probability of detection (POD), and from improvements to POD analyses procedures.

  • Improved inspection-system calibration will be provided by creating a process for commercial production of a new, reproducible, eddy current calibration block.

  • Improved scan plan affordability will result from the creation of scan plan writing tools.  Creation and implementation of these tools will provide the opportunity to develop additional scan plan writers for future USAF eddy current inspections.

  • Increased component inspection throughput will be achieved through improvements to USAF eddy current system scan plans and improved maintenance processes for eddy current systems.

  • An expanded base of advanced turbine engine NDI science and technology will result from the open-architecture management environment approach with numerous university and industrial participants.  The public release of derived technical information (within applicable release constraints) should speed the development and implementation of new techniques and systems.

  • Economic development of new NDI technologies and systems will accrue from the market efficiency of open competition for system hardware, software and scan-plan development.

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This website is maintained by: Gloria Hardy
Last Update: July 25, 2003