IMPACTS OF A PROGNOSTICS AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ON AIRCRAFT FLEET OPERATING COST DURING CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PHASE BY USING PARAMETRIC ESTIMATION

The scope of the study is to analyse the operating cost of an aircraft fleet, during conceptual design phase, when installing a Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) system. Part of the work is devoted to the process and related methodologies aimed at estimating the cost and the fleet operative behaviour in a very preliminary phase of the product life cycle. The cost estimation is carried out using a commercial and proprietary parametric cost estimation software in order to quantify the impact of a PHM system in terms of additional costs related to the installation of the new system (i.e. PHM system) and the benefits due to its use. These benefits are related to the reduction of maintenance hours necessary to carry out hard structural inspection and to the increment of aircraft availability. To correctly estimate the impact of these benefits, a fleet simulation model, which employs Monte Carlo methodology, has been developed within this research.