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According to regulations, aircraft must be in an airworthy condition before they can be operated. To ensure airworthiness, they must be maintained by an approved component maintenance organisation. This study is aimed to identify potential errors that may arise during the final inspection and certification process of aircraft components, categorise them, determine their consequences and quantify the associated risks. Any removed aircraft components must be sent to an approved aircraft component maintenance organisation for further maintenance and issuance of European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) Form 1. Thereafter, a final inspection and certification process must be conducted by certifying staff to receive an EASA Form 1. This process is crucial because any errors during this stage can result in the installation of unsafe components in an aircraft.

The Systematic Human Error Reduction and Prediction Approach (SHERPA) method was used to identify potential errors. This method involved a review of the procedures of three maintenance organisations, individual interviews with ten subject matter experts and a consensus group of 14 certifying staff from different maintenance organisations to achieve the desired results.

In this study, 39 potential errors were identified during the final inspection and certification process. Furthermore, analysis revealed that 48.7% of these issues were attributed to checking errors, making it the most common type of error observed.

This study pinpoints the potential errors in the final inspection and certification of aircraft components. It offers maintenance organisations a roadmap to assess procedures, implement preventive measures and reduce the likelihood of these errors.

This paper documents research and development that were undertaken as collaboration between the Industrial Research Institute of Swinburne University of Technology (IRIS), Armor Pty Ltd and QANTAS. The objective of the research was to investigate the application of a unitary software structure, composed of the critical path method (CPM), materials requirements planning (MRP) and production activity control (PAC) techniques, to the management of large‐scale maintenance activities (specifically aircraft maintenance). This structure had previously been applied to the manufacturing (i.e. assembly) process but the maintenance problem posed significant new challenges. First, there was the issue of generating a disassembly structure, and second, the reconciliation of demands arising from non‐serviceable components. This paper documents the implementation of the structure and the methods that were used to validate its functionality on a test‐case application (i.e. aircraft maintenance problem).

The purpose of this paper is to design a new method to realize automatic assembly of aircraft components with large shafts such as canard and vertical tail. The assembly structure of component with large shaft and fuselage is a mating assembly structure, and it is a challenge to satisfy the precision and assembly requirement.

According to the assembly structure features and process requirements of an aircraft component with large shaft, the operating principle of precise assembly system for shaft-hole mating is analyzed in this paper. The model of compliant assembly for shaft-hole mating is constructed, and force condition analysis of the compliant assembly is performed. An automatic precise shaft-hole assembly method for aircraft assembly using 5 degrees of freedom spatial mechanism, compliance technology and servo feeding system is put forward based on the analysis. A 5 degrees of freedom passive compliant experimental equipment has been developed.

Application test results of the 5 degrees of freedom passive compliant experimental equipment show that the simulated canard can be mated automatically and accurately through this method with high efficiency and high quality as long as the tip of shaft enters into the range of hole’s chamfer.

This method has been used in an aircraft assembly project. The practical results show that the aircraft components with large shafts can be mated automatically and accurately through this method with high efficiency and high quality.

This paper presents a new method and designs a new assembly system to realize the assembly of the aircraft components with large shafts. The research will promote the automation of fuselage assembly.

Accles & Pollock Ltd. of Oldbury, Worcestershire, a TI Steel Tube Division company, will be exhibiting a comprehensive range of precision steel tube and tubular products, including plain, annularly convoluted and thin wall tube, at Farnborough.

This paper aims to deal with the experimental estimation of both longitudinal- and lateral-directional aerodynamic characteristics of a new twin-engine, 11-seat commuter aircraft.

Wind tunnel tests have been conducted on a 1:8.75 scaled model. A modular model (fuselage, wing, nacelle, winglet and tail planes) has been built to analyze both complete aircraft aerodynamic characteristics and mutual effects among components. The model has been also equipped with trailing edge flaps, elevator and rudder control surfaces.

Longitudinal tests have shown the goodness of the aircraft design in terms of aircraft stability, control and trim capabilities at typical clean, take-off and landing conditions. The effects of fuselage, nacelles and winglets on lift, pitching moment and drag coefficients have been investigated. Lateral-directional stability and control characteristics of the complete aircraft and several aircraft component combinations have been tested to estimate the aircraft components’ interactions.

The experimental tests have been performed at a Reynolds number of about 0.6e6, whereas the free-flight Reynolds number range should be between 4.5e6 and 9.5e6. Thus, all the measured data suffer from the Reynolds number scaling effect.

The study provides useful aerodynamic database for P2012 Traveller commuter aircraft.

The paper deals with the experimental investigation of a new general aviation 11-seat commuter aircraft being brought to market by Tecnam Aircraft Industries and it brings some material on applied industrial design in the open literature.

THE purpose of this paper is to examine the part that metal fatigue plays in the engineering of the helicopter, and to outline the methods used at present to estimate the safe fatigue life of the component parts of the helicopter.

IN the two years since the last Farnborough Air Show was held by the Society of British Aerospace Companies the aircraft industry has achieved an almost complete metamorphosis from the body blows in the form of major programme cancellations that almost felled it in 1965 to the very healthy position that it holds today.

The analysis of the wing/fuselage and fuselage/tail unit interaction forces is extended to cover the case when the attached component is more conveniently analysed by the Matrix Displacement Method. The flexibility matrix of the complete aircraft, supported on the wing/fuselage attachment points, follows from the results derived in this and previous sections and takes into account the elastic interaction between the various components. The dynamical matrix of the complete free aircraft is set up and for completeness the theory and properties of the normal modes of vibration are given. A final sub‐section discusses some points of detail in the mass distribution and the definition of the forces on the aircraft.

TO say that the Twenty‐fourth S.B.A.C. Show was an unqualified success is perhaps to gild the lily. True there were disappointments— the delay which kept the TSR‐2 on the ground until well after the Show being one—but on the whole the British industry was well pleased with Farnborough week and if future sales could be related to the number of visitors then the order books would be full for many years to come. The total attendance at the Show was well over 400,000—this figure including just under 300,000 members of the public who paid to enter on the last three days of the Show. Those who argued in favour of allowing a two‐year interval between the 1962 Show and this one seem to be fully vindicated, for these attendance figures are an all‐time record. This augurs well for the future for it would appear that potential customers from overseas are still anxious to attend the Farnborough Show, while the public attendance figures indicate that Britain is still air‐minded to a very healthy degree. It is difficult to pick out any one feature or even one aircraft as being really outstanding at Farnborough, but certainly the range of rear‐engined civil jets (HS. 125, BAC One‐Eleven, Trident and VCIQ) served as a re‐minder that British aeronautical engineering prowess is without parallel, while the number of rotorcraft to be seen in the flying display empha‐sized the growing importance of the helicopter in both civil and military operations. As far as the value of Farnborough is concerned, it is certainly a most useful shop window for British aerospace products, and if few new orders are actually received at Farnborough, a very large number are announced— as our ’Orders and Contracts' column on page 332 bears witness. It is not possible to cover every exhibit displayed at the Farnborough Show but the following report describes a wide cross‐section beginning with the exhibits of the major airframe and engine companies.

This article outlines the procedures being used at Westland Helicopters Limited to establish the fatigue lives of the dynamic and structural components of the Lynx and to demonstrate how an adequate safety level is achieved under the loading sustained by the aircraft. For the newcomer to the fatigue problem a brief introduction to the phenomenon of fatigue will be provided and it will be shown how it is applicable to a helicopter. A philosophical outline of the fatigue procedures in current use at Westlands follows and then a description of the Lynx is given. The article will then describe the fatigue testing, flight testing and substantiation procedures used with the Lynx and it will be shown how the eventual fatigue lives are estimated. Finally some thoughts are put forward about the future of fatigue substantiation.