Air force aging aircraft research programs

The current emphasis on reducing the Federal budget has led all Federal agencies to look for ways to reduce spending. In the United States Air Force, one method of economizing is to delay buying new aircraft while extending the useful life of existing aircraft. Developing a plan for using an aircraft longer than the original design life poses a different set of problems that cannot be readily solved using standard deterministic engineering tools. (New aircraft are relatively damage free while aging aircraft have growing fatigue cracks and corrosion.) The Air Force, and other federal agencies, are looking for probabilistic tools to help evaluate life extension programs for aircraft. This paper describes some of the unique engineering problems associated with aging aircraft, some of the data collection efforts that have been implemented to track damage accumulation in aging aircraft, and some of the probabilistic tools that have been developed to help solve these problems using the available data.