Identifying Maintenance Tasks for Aircraft Hydrogen Systems using the MSG-3 Analysis and their Implications on Operation

Abstract

Aviation faces political and social pressure to reduce its climate impact. Fuelling air-craft with green hydrogen (H2) is one approach to reduce the lifecycle emissions. Airbus announcement to develop a hydrogen powered aircraft by 2035, increased the chance for hydrogen to become the next leap in civil aviation (Spaeth 2020). Hydro-gen research in aviation mainly focuses on the development and comparison of dif-ferent aircraft designs. However, maintenance for hydrogen powered aircraft is wide-ly disregarded by researcher and if mentioned, only marginally. This gap within the existing literature is addressed with our presentation, in which we present the application of the MSG-3 analysis on a real H2 aircraft system within the scope of the research project “Hydrogen Aviation Lab”. A simple H2 system, that could replace an auxiliary power unit (APU), is developed for the integration into a phased-out Airbus A320. The system’s main components consist of the tank for liq-uid H2, a fuel cell as consumer for gaseous H2 and the connecting piping. Our goal is to identify the maintenance tasks for that novel system based on the detailed sys-tem layout and their consequences on the aircraft operation under the assumption, that the H2 system replaces the APU of the aircraft. To identify the maintenance tasks and with the detailed H2 system design, we con-duct the steps of the MSG-3 analysis in the first part of the study. The H2 system is divided into subsystems, and their functions and functional failures are systematically identified. Based on the failure effects and the components technical specifications, maintenance tasks and intervals are determined. The maintenance man hours for the tasks are identified subsequently. The individual tasks are combined, so that schedule for the H2 system is conducted.