Currently, the Air Force's fleet of aircraft, and helicopters in particular, are aging. These aircraft are nearing the end of their design life, but are being required to continue service well into the next century. In an attempt to help extend the life of these aircraft, the area of health monitoring has received considerable interest. In the case of the MH-53J PAVE LOW, this health monitoring has taken the form of vibration monitoring. The initial effort at health monitoring has consisted of placing accelerometers on the bearing support brackets for the tail rotor drive shaft. The results of this monitoring have provided information that allows the maintainers to replace the bearings only when the bearing is showing signs of wear rather than at a given interval. Additionally, the data has been used to make near real time evaluations of the airworthiness of the aircraft. The result has been a decrease of 50% in the number of missions canceled due to vibration related issues. The Air Force is looking at expanding the present vibration monitoring system to the entire fleet of MH-53J aircraft. In conjunction with this expansion, this paper looks at evaluating a transducer specifically designed for monitoring bearings. A comparison between accelerometer responses and the bearing transducer response is made.

Date Published: 27 July 1998
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 3329, Smart Structures and Materials 1998: Smart Structures and Integrated Systems, (27 July 1998); doi: 10.1117/12.316920

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3329:
Smart Structures and Materials 1998: Smart Structures and Integrated Systems
Mark E. Regelbrugge, Editor(s)