The Research On Zonal Analysis Rating And Inspection Intervals For Civil Aircraft

MSG method is widely acknowledged as the guiding ideology of developing the aircraft maintenance outline by the international civil aviation industry. The maintenance works and the method of determining maintenance intervals included in it lay a solid foundation for the aircraft maintenance work, and they also play an important role in aircraft safety operations and saving cost. Especially, China now is carrying out the project of producing large civil aircrafts, of which China holds property rights independently. Thus, how to determine a reasonable maintenance interval according to the MSG-3 theory has become a key issue, which is also a basic problem to ensure the aircraft continuing airworthiness.Given that the matrix method of determining maintenance interval is widely used on the main kinds of the international aircrafts. However, the matrix method neglects the significance of each rating index, in addition to the fact that China’s domestic maintenance engineers have inadequate experience of zonal analysis. This article focuses on the zonal analysis rating method of civil aircraft, in order to make the corresponding maintenance intervals of different zones.This article analyses a variety of foreign maintenance documents and practical engineering situations, systematically establishes a zonal rating system based on three basic indexes: density, importance and exposure, and uses the AHP method to determine the weighting of each index, comprehensive rates and maintenance intervals as well. Meanwhile, referring to ATA2200 regulation, the aircraft can be divided into eight zones, in order to carry out the follow-up verification work: Lower Half of Fuselage, Upper Half of Fuselage, the aft fuselage and empennage(includes rudder), Power Plants and Nacelle Pylon, Left and Right Wing, Landing Gear and Landing Gear doors, Passenger and Cargo Compartment Doors. Besides, an attempt of developing an auxiliary system of zonal analysis under support of computer tool MATLAB to simplify the rating process is also carried out, which is expected to make the rating method more practical.