Method of maintaining components subject to fatigue failure

摘要

A method is provided for maintaining components subject to fatigue failure during in service use. The method uses statistical distributions (10) in a simulation of in service use (16) of a fleet of components to predict the failure rate (12) of the fleet over a fixed time increment (14, 26) for an assumed inspection program. These predictions are used to determine an operating plan (20), including an inspection program, that will maintain an acceptable failure rate by detecting components with fatigue indications and removing the components prior to failure (22). The inspection program provides actual fatigue data resulting from in service use (18). As the inspection data base grows, the simulation is revised (24, 48) to incorporate the data. The predicted failure rates and the operating plan (20) are then updated based on the revised simulation.