Vibration Health Monitoring of Helicopter Transmission Systems at Westland Helicopter Ltd.

Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) have gained experience with Helicopter Vibration Health Monitoring (VHM) System technology with the help of UK GKN-WHL. GKN-WHL have had many years of experience with the research and development of vibration analysis techniques to improve the health monitoring of helicopter transmissions. This activity was targeted at transmission rig testing at first, but the techniques have been progressively developed where they are now used as a part of integrated Health and Usage Monitoring (HUM) systems on many types of in-service and new helicopters. The technique development process has been considerably aided by an ever expanding database of transmission monitoring experience from both the rig testing and aircraft operations. This experience covers a wide range of failure types from naturally occurring faults to crack propagation studies and covering a wide range of transmission configurations. Primarily based on accelerometer signals GKN-WHL's vibration analysis methods have also been applied to a variety of other sensor types. The transition from an experimental environment to operational VHM systems has been a lengthy process, there being a need to demonstrate technique reliability as well as effectiveness to both regulatory (Airworthiness Authority) and commercial organizations. Another important feature of this process has been the development of close relationships with a number of VHM system hardware and software suppliers. Such an experienced GKN-WHL provides various raw vibration data which was acquired from transmission ground test rig and allow KARI to develop it's own analysis program. KARI made a program and then analyzed the data to coma pre with the results of GKN-WHL. The KARI's results both time domain signals and statistical values show comparable to GKN's.