MIXED REALITY FOR AIRCRAFT STRUCTURAL DENT AND BUCKLE NON-DESTRUCTIVE EVALUATION

Kurzfassung

This paper describes a Mixed Reality (MR) framework for the Non-destructive Evaluation (NDE) of aircraft structures supplementing maintainer Dent and Buckle Chart procedures. The motivation for this research lies in the question of how MR can be used to reduce labour-intensive inspections and supplement aircraft conditionbased maintenance. Results demonstrate that state-of-the-art laser scanning can improve manual assessment of dent damage and processes can be automated, helping reduce inspection time and increase accuracy in locating and evaluating damage as well as reduce decision-making time in operations. This paper includes alignment with stakeholder requirements and maintenance procedures to ensure end-user acceptability of MR through verification. Additionally, verification and validation trials have been performed at an Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) organizations for an end-to-end evaluation of the NDE framework. This adds qualitative and quantitative results enabling a comparison of the existing procedure using Dent & Buckle Charts and the proposed MR-NDE process for time, accuracy and resourcing improvements to aircraft sustainment and operations.