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Monitoring Helicopter Swash Plates Assemblies by Integration of Ferrography and Atomic Emission Spectrometry

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Abstract

Helicopters Swash Plates Assembly allows helicopter steering movement and is defined as a safety system. This system experiences wear and high loads during flight. Following a failure of an assembly that caused a helicopter forced landing, a novel method was developed to monitor the system for early warning based on integration of the Ferrography and Atomic Emission Spectrometry methods. The critical values of metal concentration and particle size in a sample were determined for Ferrography and Atomic Emission Spectrometry methods, respectively. The valuable results allowed developing a decision-making flowchart. The integration of the methods yielded complementary detectability and extended detection range. Over a period of 7.5 years, 37 different assemblies were monitored, yielding a wide data base of 1618 samples. Recently, four assemblies were removed from helicopters following the method alerts and found as True Positive cases, in addition one control assembly was dismantled and found True Negative. Nowadays, this method is implemented on helicopters in service.

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Abbreviations

CBM:

Condition-based maintenance

AES:

Atomic emission spectrometry

RDE-AES:

Rotating Disk Electrode Atomic Emission Spectrometry

CMC:

Critical Metal Concentrations

CPS:

Critical Particle Size

SPA:

Swash Plates Assembly

FAI:

Failure analysis investigation

MPS:

Medium Particle Size

PPM:

Parts Per Million

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge Ms. Hila Tarshish, Ms. Chen Shefer, Ms. Keren Dekel and Mr. Avi Ernst from Materials Science & Engineering Division, IAF, Israel for their contributions over the years as the technical staff of the AES laboratory.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profits sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials and Process, Materials Science and Engineering Division, Israeli Air Force (IAF), Tel Aviv, Israel

    R. Kruchinin, G. Baron, D. Fishman, G. Shemesh & O. Levi

  2. Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    O. Levi

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  1. R. Kruchinin
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  2. G. Baron
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  3. D. Fishman
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Correspondence to O. Levi.

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Kruchinin, R., Baron, G., Fishman, D. et al. Monitoring Helicopter Swash Plates Assemblies by Integration of Ferrography and Atomic Emission Spectrometry. J Fail. Anal. and Preven. 22, 1442–1456 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11668-022-01409-6

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