Osborne Park-based technology developer, Structural Monitoring Systems Plc has announced the successful trial installation of its comparative vacuum monitoring system (CVM) on a Boeing commercial aircraft.
Osborne Park-based technology developer, Structural Monitoring Systems Plc has announced the successful trial installation of its comparative vacuum monitoring system (CVM) on a Boeing commercial aircraft.
The announcement follows an agreement last year by the Boeing company to include Structural's CVM monitoring technology into the Boeing non-destructive inspection manual.
An announcement from Structural Monitoring Systems is pasted below:
The Company is pleased to announce that important milestone for the Company's Comparative Vacuum Monitoring (CVM™) technology was recently achieved with the first trial installation of a production CVM system on a Boeing commercial aircraft structure.
On the 8 March 2007 the Company announced the "World's First" agreement by The Boeing Company to include its CVM structural health monitoring technology into the Boeing Common Non-Destructive Inspection (NDI) manual.
Since that time a number of US airlines have formally requested Boeing to consider approving the use of CVMtechnology as an alternative means of compliance (AMOC) for existing service bulletin (SB) inspections.
As a first step two of these airlines and cargo operator are supporting the use of CVM sensors on their aircraft as an alternative to frequent inspections that incur significant maintenance costs and impact on operating aircraft's availability.
In return Boeing has recognized the potential benefit to its customers of using CVM technology, and is providing a high level of technical support for the approval process.
As this is yet another "Aerospace Industry World's First", Boeing has requested that the Company perform a trial installation of the proposed CVM sensor configurations the Company has designed to address the specific applications.
The installation was conducted at the FAA Airworthiness Assurance NDI Validation Center at Sandia National Labs. The installation was performed by two of the Company's new Customer Support Group engineers.
The successful installation was witnessed by the Boeing engineer who is evaluating the use of CVM technology for these applications, who has a designated engineering authority from the FAA with respect to the related service bulletin.
In recognition of significance of this event the senior management of Sandia National Laboratories presented certificates the members of the team from Boeing, the involved airlines, the AANC, and SMS stating that "this team produced the Comparative Vacuum Monitoring sensor and achieved certification to install the first on-board structural health monitoring sensor ever deployed on commercial aircraft".
SMS Managing Director, Mark Vellacott, said "this installation is an important stepping stone in the process for the first CVM sensor application to be approved as an alternative means of compliance for an existing mandatory inspection on commercial aircraft.
Agreement has been reached with Boeing on the remaining steps in the process that need to be completed before their approval can be granted.