• Aviation, Semester 3, position 4

Within the course “Aircraft maintenance” students will gain basic knowledge concerning contemporary theories and praxes in the maintenance and revitalization of both military and civil aircrafts. Furthermore, a part of the course is dedicated to exploration of maintainability, reliability of fighting tenacity, as well as the basic structural characteristics of the system that are defined in the early stages of design and development of modern aircrafts.

After mastering the curriculum, students will be capable of creative thinking and decision making in the domain of aircraft maintenance. By gaining sufficient theoretical and practical knowledge, they will be able to participate equally in a working team designing or maintaining the aircraft and to further improve important flight characteristics such as reliability, maintainability, fighting tenacity or durability (particularly in cases of forced landings).

Introduction. Basic assumptions in aircraft maintenance. Technical maintenance. Safety and reliability in air-traffic. Maintenance concept. Maintenance activities. Maintenance levels. Maintenance in an airline. Line maintenance. Quantitative indicators of maintainability. Mathematical models of aircraft maintenance. Economical working life of equipment and systems. Necessary spare parts. Optimal number of checks. Minimal total cost. Reliability, usability and time-to-failure of regularly maintained systems. Defining the interval of preventive maintenance of parts and systems. Maintainability prediction. Aero-technical safety. Maintenance technologies. Determination and control of aircraft condition.

Maintenance activities and levels. Airliners line maintenance. Probability distributions in maintainability and repairability. Maintenance cost optimization. Maintainability functions. Repairability functions. Maintenance period. Maintainability index. Safety indicator. Human activities indicator. Equipment availability factors: nominal, achieved and usable availability. Computational assignments derived from the course material. Maintainability prediction. Structural maintainability. Computational assignments. Diagnosis – nondestructive testing methods. Contemporary concept of aero-technical safety. Aircraft fighting tenacity. Aircraft vulnerability. Consultations.

No specified conditions.

Rasuo, B, Aero-technical safety, Serbian Military Headquarters, Belgrade, 2004; Additional materials (handouts, assignments etc.)

Total assigned hours: 75

New material: 20
Elaboration and examples (recapitulation): 10

Auditory exercises: 10
Laboratory exercises: 0
Calculation tasks: 0
Seminar paper: 20
Project: 0
Consultations: 0
Discussion/workshop: 0
Research study work: 0

Review and grading of calculation tasks: 0
Review and grading of lab reports: 0
Review and grading of seminar papers: 10
Review and grading of the project: 0
Test: 0
Test: 0
Final exam: 5

Activity during lectures: 15
Test/test: 0
Laboratory practice: 0
Calculation tasks: 0
Seminar paper: 55
Project: 0
Final exam: 30
Requirement for taking the exam (required number of points): 35

Aircraft maintenance, N. Petrovic, P. Kalicanin, G. Vorotovic, C. Mitrovic, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, 2016.; Bruce R. Aubin, Aircraft Maintenance, SAE International, 2004; Aviation Maintenance Techician Handbook, FAA, 2023,