This thesis describes the development of a decision support tool for unplanned maintenance of aircraft at ramp time during airport operations. Ramp time is the time between an aircraft arrival and its next departure. Clearance of an aircraft for flight is controlled by aviation regulations. Therefore decisions regarding maintenance are taken by engineers who have to comply with the regulations that are governed outside the organizational structure of the airline. Unplanned maintenance also often disrupts the normal operational scheduling and leads to significant costs. Therefore, the decision support tool must include the relevant aviation regulations, be capable of rescheduling to minimise disruption and be able to optimise solutions based on cost. In this project an aircraft schedule is used to demonstrate the procedures. An assumed fleet of six airplanes fly between three cities. Consultation with aviation experts ensured the size of the fleet and operations are realistic. A regulation database was developed based on the Master Minimum Equipment List (MMEL) for the aircraft, and a computer programme was developed to provide different options that comply with the regulations and take into account scheduling disruption and costs. In certain cases the regulations allow an aircraft to fly with some components inoperable so long as backup systems can perform the tasks. It is possible then to postpone the maintenance until the aircraft arrives at a properly equipped airport, or until a longer scheduled stopover reduces the disruption to operations. To address the engineering aspects of the project, maintenance of a single component that appears in the MMEL for the chosen aircraft is considered. To plan maintenance following a failure, the cause of the failure needs to be identified. Only then can the resources and time required to repair the defect be defined. The programme validation has confirmed it is able to balance different aspects of decisions related to unplanned aircraft ramp maintenance. Although the programme is based on an assumed fleet operation, the structure of the programme will allow it to be applied to other fleet and route configurations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/242970 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Zhao, Jing, Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Jing Zhao, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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