Through-Life Maintenance Cost of Digital Avionics

Abstract

Modern avionics can account for around 30% of the total cost of the aircraft. Therefore, it is essential to reduce the operational cost of avionics during a lifetime. This article addresses the critical scientific problem of creating the appropriate maintenance models for digital avionics systems that significantly increase their operational effectiveness. In this research, we propose the lifecycle cost equations to select the best option for the maintenance of digital avionics. The proposed cost equations consider permanent failures, intermittent faults, and false-positives occurred during the flight. The lifecycle cost equations are determined for the warranty and the post-warranty interval of aircraft operation. We model several maintenance options for each period of service. The cost equations consider the characteristics of the permanent failures and intermittent faults, conditional probabilities of in-flight false-positive and true-positive as well as the cost of different maintenance operations, duration of the flight, and some other parameters. We have demonstrated that a three-level post-warranty maintenance variant with a detector of intermittent faults is the best because it minimizes the total expected maintenance cost several folds compared to other maintenance options.