CONNECTIVITY ENGINE MAINTENANCE
The growing sophistication of monitoring in-flight connectivity helps to boost predictive maintenance.
Connectivity can save engines (and lives)
Passengers and operators have enjoyed connectivity on business jets for decades. Recently engine manufacturers and others are revving up to reap the benefits too. Words: Megan Kelly
CONNECTIVITY ENGINE MAINTENANCE
Connectivity can save engines (and lives)
Passengers and operators have enjoyed connectivity on business jets for decades. Recently engine manufacturers and others are revving up to reap the benefits too. Words: Megan Kelly
The growing sophistication of monitoring in-flight connectivity helps to boost predictive maintenance.
AT THE TURN of the Millennium, in-flight connectivity was a thing of dreams. Then, Boeing introduced Connexion in June 2001 and the era of onboard Wi-Fi was born. A novelty at the time, today connectivity problems can become no-go events.
Technology has evolved over the past two decades and is now used for mid-air business calls and relaxing with Netflix series. In fact, almost every vital component in an aircraft, especially the engines, can be connected to the internet to record and send data, improve safety standards and cut both costs and downtime.
Connectivity is being used to transmit data in different ways. One form is known as snapshot data. This takes a snapshot of the conditions of components on an aircraft at a fixed time. It is used to build a picture of an engine or component (such as landing gear) over time by comparing snapshots from one flight to the next.
A more recent way of using connectivity to track trends and spot anomalies is by using continuous data. This feeds back information about what’s happening on a flight in real-time.
Steve Schoonveld, director, Connected Aircraft, GE Aerospace explains the potential: “Today, with the increase in connectivity options and the cost coming down for those, we can record full flight data. So, we can see everything that happens on the aircraft and the engines from the time they start to the time they shut down,” he tells Corporate Jet Investor (CJI). “That allows us to get a rich picture of what’s happening on the aircraft at all points in time. It’s like moving from pictures to movies.”
Schoonveld says this enables GE to predict aircraft performance more accurately, as well as predict component failures. “We can see when something is starting to trend outside of the normal for aircraft. So, we get a lot better detection of anomalies, which allows us to provide more advanced notice to operators,” he says. “So instead of getting one flight’s worth of advanced notice, we can now expand that to maybe a month of planned notice and allow customers to plan that maintenance at a point that’s convenient for them.”
GE isn’t the only company exploiting this technology. Engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce sees itself as “industry-leading” in terms of its connectivity and it’s the business aviation side of the company that’s driving this, according to Fraser Scott, vice president of Business & Capability Services, Business Aviation, Rolls-Royce. “We know that because of the developments that the aircraft manufacturers are having to do, to accommodate what we want, because it doesn’t exist already,” he says. “We’ve identified more business opportunities and customer value opportunities in connectivity than the airlines have even recognised.”
Scott says that while snapshot data has been “the bread and butter” of aircraft health monitoring over the past 20 years, continuous data has enabled the company to take a proactive approach to maintenance. “The biggest difference from snapshot data is that now we can look at dynamic responses and things that are happening inside the engine and really get to see much deeper inside it,” he says. “If you don’t have this connectivity, then you really don’t know much about what’s happening inside your engine, you can only experience it.”
‘We can see the problem start to develop’
Without connectivity, damage or potential problems are noticed only if the engine is running hot or has some starting issues and the cause can be unclear. “If you’re just using snapshot data, we can measure things like compressor efficiency, maybe it’s been deteriorating over time or maybe you’ve been in a harsh environment and we can see that,” he says. “If you look at what we can do with this new continuous data and new levels of fidelity we’re getting, you can start to see things like torque motor currents and voltages and things happening in very high frequency. Before you could ever tell there was something going wrong, we can see the problem start to develop.”
The scale of data that Rolls-Royce creates and tracks is almost unimaginable – but the company does its best to break it down; inviting us to focus on data generated from one facility in 2019. At this facility, within the year, Rolls-Royce made 6,000 fan blades for aircraft engines. In making these blades, the company generated three petabytes of data. (If you haven’t heard of a petabyte you’re not alone unless you’re a data engineer).
The engine manufacturer explains petabyte like this: “Start by taking 4,000 pictures with your phone. Now do it every day – for the rest of your life. And eventually the file size of all those snaps will be near one petabyte. Now multiply that by three. That’s how much information [Rolls-Royce] generates, just from making fan blades over the course of a year. But data is collected at every point of the product lifecycle, from design to testing and through to creation and maintenance.”
Similarly, GE is using connectivity to monitor a host of data, including fuel insights for fuel efficiency, cost and carbon emissions, insights to improve safety, training and maintenance. This enables operators and pilots to search past and present data and trends such as engine temperature and performance.
“As an example, we’ve had aircraft that are flying over the ocean when the operator or pilot reports issues to an OEM or technical operations centre, asking for assistance,” says GE’s Schoonveld. “We can interrogate it in real-time and pull down some additional data to see what’s happening on that aircraft. That gives the OEM and tech-ops team the information they need to assist their customers and help provide the crew with the information they need to make the right decisions.”
Having so much readily accessible data helps rule out false alarms too. “We’ve seen things like temperature fluctuation, and we interrogate it and find out it’s just a sensor issue,” says Schoonveld. “With that two-way connectivity we’re able to troubleshoot in real time and give everybody the information they need to make the best decisions they can.”
Having to collect, monitor and maintain so much data is bound to be costly, not to mention the cost of building, maintaining and retrofitting components to enable them to collect the data. Both Scott and Schoonveld say that their modern engines have connectivity built-in, but there would be retrofitting costs to add the software to older aircraft.
Rolls-Royce’s Scott says the real cost is in managing, storing and running analytics on such a sheer volume of data, causing the company to have to build new data storage systems just to keep up. The manufacturer has developed new cloud-based platforms, a suite of analytics capabilities and new customer portals so clients can select the data they want to see. He says that sometimes customers want to know about every data point on every flight, whereas others only want “a blank sheet of paper” unless there’s something they absolutely need to know about.
Neither Rolls-Royce nor GE could confirm how much the company has invested in these types of software. But Schoonveld says it will eventually pay for itself. “Keeping components on wing longer is certainly good for the operators, meaning fewer disruptions and greater aircraft availability. You want to catch issues early, and there's still a maintenance cost to address them, but it's less than if you had waited until it had failed.
“It’s like the brakes on your car, if you catch issues on time, you just replace the pads. But if you go too far, next thing you’re replacing everything, and the costs just keep rising.”
Scott adds: “Why we’ve been investing so much in this capability is something that we’ve had to explain to our project directors. When they see the return on investment, they’re happy.”
The return is two-fold. First, it enables the company to optimise when an engine can be scheduled for maintenance, meaning it can stay in the air longer, and second, it adds value that the customer will pay for. “Both of these mean that in managing the fleet over the lifecycle, we will absolutely save money,” he says.
“With that two-way connectivity we’re able to troubleshoot in real time and give everybody the information they need”
Above: Rolls-Royce has developed new cloud-based platforms, a suite of analytic capabilities and new customer portals.
‘We can see the problem start to develop’
Without connectivity, damage or potential problems are noticed only if the engine is running hot or has some starting issues and the cause can be unclear. “If you’re just using snapshot data, we can measure things like compressor efficiency, maybe it’s been deteriorating over time or maybe you’ve been in a harsh environment and we can see that,” he says. “If you look at what we can do with this new continuous data and new levels of fidelity we’re getting, you can start to see things like torque motor currents and voltages and things happening in very high frequency. Before you could ever tell there was something going wrong, we can see the problem start to develop.”
The scale of data that Rolls-Royce creates and tracks is almost unimaginable – but the company does its best to break it down; inviting us to focus on data generated from one facility in 2019. At this facility, within the year, Rolls-Royce made 6,000 fan blades for aircraft engines. In making these blades, the company generated three petabytes of data. (If you haven’t heard of a petabyte you’re not alone unless you’re a data engineer).
The engine manufacturer explains petabyte like this: “Start by taking 4,000 pictures with your phone. Now do it every day – for the rest of your life. And eventually the file size of all those snaps will be near one petabyte. Now multiply that by three. That’s how much information [Rolls-Royce] generates, just from making fan blades over the course of a year. But data is collected at every point of the product lifecycle, from design to testing and through to creation and maintenance.”
Similarly, GE is using connectivity to monitor a host of data, including fuel insights for fuel efficiency, cost and carbon emissions, insights to improve safety, training and maintenance. This enables operators and pilots to search past and present data and trends such as engine temperature and performance.
“As an example, we’ve had aircraft that are flying over the ocean when the operator or pilot reports issues to an OEM or technical operations centre, asking for assistance,” says GE’s Schoonveld. “We can interrogate it in real-time and pull down some additional data to see what’s happening on that aircraft. That gives the OEM and tech-ops team the information they need to assist their customers and help provide the crew with the information they need to make the right decisions.”
Having so much readily accessible data helps rule out false alarms too. “We’ve seen things like temperature fluctuation, and we interrogate it and find out it’s just a sensor issue,” says Schoonveld. “With that two-way connectivity we’re able to troubleshoot in real time and give everybody the information they need to make the best decisions they can.”
Having to collect, monitor and maintain so much data is bound to be costly, not to mention the cost of building, maintaining and retrofitting components to enable them to collect the data. Both Scott and Schoonveld say that their modern engines have connectivity built-in, but there would be retrofitting costs to add the software to older aircraft.
Rolls-Royce’s Scott says the real cost is in managing, storing and running analytics on such a sheer volume of data, causing the company to have to build new data storage systems just to keep up. The manufacturer has developed new cloud-based platforms, a suite of analytics capabilities and new customer portals so clients can select the data they want to see. He says that sometimes customers want to know about every data point on every flight, whereas others only want “a blank sheet of paper” unless there’s something they absolutely need to know about.
Neither Rolls-Royce nor GE could confirm how much the company has invested in these types of software. But Schoonveld says it will eventually pay for itself. “Keeping components on wing longer is certainly good for the operators, meaning fewer disruptions and greater aircraft availability. You want to catch issues early, and there's still a maintenance cost to address them, but it's less than if you had waited until it had failed.
“It’s like the brakes on your car, if you catch issues on time, you just replace the pads. But if you go too far, next thing you’re replacing everything, and the costs just keep rising.”
Scott adds: “Why we’ve been investing so much in this capability is something that we’ve had to explain to our project directors. When they see the return on investment, they’re happy.”
The return is two-fold. First, it enables the company to optimise when an engine can be scheduled for maintenance, meaning it can stay in the air longer, and second, it adds value that the customer will pay for. “Both of these mean that in managing the fleet over the lifecycle, we will absolutely save money,” he says.
“With that two-way connectivity we’re able to troubleshoot in real time and give everybody the information they need”
Above: Rolls-Royce has developed new cloud-based platforms, a suite of analytic capabilities and new customer portals.
Software coding and specialist analytics
The amount of information that needs to be processed constantly, and the skills required by engineers to do so, mean tools like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning need to be used to perform diagnostics.
“It’s a growing area,” says Scott. “You need people who can do software coding and specialist analytics.” Rolls-Royce splits this between third parties and in-house engineers who can carry out Python coding. The coding, named in tribute to British comedy group Monty Python, is meant to be “fun to use” according to its developers, but is a technically skilled, high-level programming language. For even more complicated analytics, the OEM is working with specialists in Poland, the UK and India. It’s an area difficult to recruit for, and the skills are extremely sought after.
But simply handing over massive amounts of data – both client and company data – could present a huge security risk that may have the potential to remove privacy from private jets or, at worst, threaten lives.
“We can’t provide some of these companies with real data because of the data security risk, so we have to provide them with dummy data,” Scott says. It depends on where the third-party company is in the world, and how extensive their data protection laws are. To even send dummy data (which can be helpful to use as a baseline, or to find patterns before a fault on an anonymous jet), Rolls-Royce needs to go through security processes.
One example of these rigorous processes is a penetration test, also known as ethical hacking. This is an authorised cyberattack to evaluate the system’s security and find cracks before they’re found out by real hackers.
GE’s Schoonveld agrees, saying connectivity products all go through similar security testing. “We design security into our products. Typically, our products don’t allow any changes to the aircraft or any interaction with the aircraft that could have an adverse impact. They’re only sending data or doing benign operations that wouldn’t impact the aircraft. That’s a safety layer in addition to the other cybersecurity protection we already have like intrusion detection that’s installed on our products.”
“We can’t provide some of these companies with real data because of the security risk.”
Scott says the whole point of engine connectivity “is about customer value, preventing operational disruption and getting a faster response when there has been a problem to get the customer flying again, but doing all this in a way that is absolutely safe”.
Waiting for FAA or European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) approvals shouldn’t be an issue, as Schoonveld says the software necessary has typically been approved already. Without this barrier, it’s a race to see which OEM can use the data in the most useful, cost-efficient and safe way.
So, what are other aviation companies doing to keep up? Collins Aerospace tells CJI the firm has “a number of technologies that support a connected aviation ecosystem”. But these currently are focused on commercial aviation to help reduce delays, cancellations and reroutes.
Other OEMs have apps that use engine data to provide preventative maintenance using analytics, such as Honeywell’s GoDirect Maintenance Advisor. It analyses and troubleshoots faults, using operating data, and gives users alerts through their mobile or tablet. This system also learns from historical data, decoding a fault history database on a secure server and delivering the information in accessible formats that are easy to understand. It provides fleet-wide analysis of faults logged on the internet and gives analytics and preventative maintenance support to help both MROs and the end-user.
For the latest trends in business jet connectivity, don’t miss our latest research, in partnership with Inmarsat, published in this edition.
Meanwhile, connectivity in engines may still be in its infancy, but it’s clear that engine manufacturers are already using data and analytics to provide practical benefits to save time and money, by keeping aircraft in the skies.
It’s only going to get smarter. In the race to deliver the jets of the future, engine manufacturers such as GE and Rolls-Royce seem to be off to a head start.
Fraser Scott, vice president, Services Business and Capability Business Aviation, Rolls-Royce, Germany.
Honda’s GE Honda HF120 light business jet engine – with added security.
Software coding and specialist analytics
The amount of information that needs to be processed constantly, and the skills required by engineers to do so, mean tools like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning need to be used to perform diagnostics.
“It’s a growing area,” says Scott. “You need people who can do software coding and specialist analytics.” Rolls-Royce splits this between third parties and in-house engineers who can carry out Python coding. The coding, named in tribute to British comedy group Monty Python, is meant to be “fun to use” according to its developers, but is a technically skilled, high-level programming language. For even more complicated analytics, the OEM is working with specialists in Poland, the UK and India. It’s an area difficult to recruit for, and the skills are extremely sought after.
But simply handing over massive amounts of data – both client and company data – could present a huge security risk that may have the potential to remove privacy from private jets or, at worst, threaten lives.
“We can’t provide some of these companies with real data because of the data security risk, so we have to provide them with dummy data,” Scott says. It depends on where the third-party company is in the world, and how extensive their data protection laws are. To even send dummy data (which can be helpful to use as a baseline, or to find patterns before a fault on an anonymous jet), Rolls-Royce needs to go through security processes.
One example of these rigorous processes is a penetration test, also known as ethical hacking. This is an authorised cyberattack to evaluate the system’s security and find cracks before they’re found out by real hackers.
GE’s Schoonveld agrees, saying connectivity products all go through similar security testing. “We design security into our products. Typically, our products don’t allow any changes to the aircraft or any interaction with the aircraft that could have an adverse impact. They’re only sending data or doing benign operations that wouldn’t impact the aircraft. That’s a safety layer in addition to the other cybersecurity protection we already have like intrusion detection that’s installed on our products.”
“We can’t provide some of these companies with real data because of the security risk.”
Scott says the whole point of engine connectivity “is about customer value, preventing operational disruption and getting a faster response when there has been a problem to get the customer flying again, but doing all this in a way that is absolutely safe”.
Waiting for FAA or European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) approvals shouldn’t be an issue, as Schoonveld says the software necessary has typically been approved already. Without this barrier, it’s a race to see which OEM can use the data in the most useful, cost-efficient and safe way.
So, what are other aviation companies doing to keep up? Collins Aerospace tells CJI the firm has “a number of technologies that support a connected aviation ecosystem”. But these currently are focused on commercial aviation to help reduce delays, cancellations and reroutes.
Other OEMs have apps that use engine data to provide preventative maintenance using analytics, such as Honeywell’s GoDirect Maintenance Advisor. It analyses and troubleshoots faults, using operating data, and gives users alerts through their mobile or tablet. This system also learns from historical data, decoding a fault history database on a secure server and delivering the information in accessible formats that are easy to understand. It provides fleet-wide analysis of faults logged on the internet and gives analytics and preventative maintenance support to help both MROs and the end-user.
For the latest trends in business jet connectivity, don’t miss our latest research, in partnership with Inmarsat, published in this edition.
Meanwhile, connectivity in engines may still be in its infancy, but it’s clear that engine manufacturers are already using data and analytics to provide practical benefits to save time and money, by keeping aircraft in the skies.
It’s only going to get smarter. In the race to deliver the jets of the future, engine manufacturers such as GE and Rolls-Royce seem to be off to a head start.
Fraser Scott, vice president, Services Business and Capability
Business Aviation, Rolls-Royce, Germany.
Honda’s GE Honda HF120 light business jet engine – with added security.
