Field repairs of aircraft engines

The challenge to the manufacturer or service provider is how to assess and define true customer expectations and then how to design, manufacture and sell the product to best meet those expectations. Each product must provide operational capabilities, which allow military forces to maintain technical and logistic superiority over a potential adversary even if it is just natural or induced environment, which can be expected over the operating and maintenance portion of life cycle. Battle damage repair is a critical factor in managing operation. We acknowledge that traditional cost minimizing measures are not always central and other performance measures such as time of repair, reliability and availability become more relevant. Assessing aircraft damages in the field and making appropriate decisions on the reparability, making repairs at the lowest repair level possible and evaluating airworthiness of subsequent repairs is critical to the air forces maintaining its force projection capability. Among other, combat damage of helicopters, damaged areas and erosion on leading edges of the compressor first stage rotor blades, achievable and optimum solution, goal function – duration minimisation, goal function – cost minimisation are presented in the paper.