SBIR-STTR Award

Federal Engineering Associates LLC (FEA-LLC), working with its partners Composite Engineering Inc., AGFM, and MSC Software (the manufacturer of the finite element analysis software used in designing the F-35), proposes development of ARPPAS (Automatic Repair Planning and Part Archival System) a computational system for automatically modeling, designing, and validating structural repairs for the F-35. The SBIR project will provide a web-based tool used to automatically model, define, and validate structural repairs for advanced composite aircraft components, configured to provide support to repair depots, ships at sea, and forward-based maintenance centers. Phase I of this SBIR will demonstrate capabilities, operating shell, and user interface for non-expert users on a a solid laminate skin bay repair

Benefits:
The anticipated benefits of ARPPAS include enabling line repair technicians to input only essential data to define a composite F-35 aircraft part repair using a web-based user interface, and receive in return an automatic finite element-based repair definition and analysis. The automatic analysis will validate the repair sufficiency, its compliance with design standards, and its safety using reference geometric models and data stored in databases as modified by the user. Non-expert users of ARPPAS will benefit from the automatic, comprehensive structural analysis of the proposed repair and automated expert definition of acceptable repair procedures. ARPPAS has widespread potential use for reducing cost and increasing quality of composite aircraft part repairs in government and civilian aircraft repair facilities. Expert users will benefit from the ability to track, monitor, and control the repair definition process. ARPPAS also enables expert maintenance support for warfighters in remote locations, providing a means for validating airworthiness of emergency repairs via low-bandwidth web-based applications that run on ordinary computers and laptops. ARPPAS will provide similar benefits and substantial cost savings to commercial aircraft repair facilities, and by extension, to facilities repairing other critical equipment with similar structures and demanding performance requirments

The proposed Phase II SBIR project is the continued development of software that provides a unified, transparent engineering and logistics data environment for use in F-35 composite aircraft part maintenance. It will, for the first time, inject high powered engineering analysis tools into the aircraft repair environment, and assemble the information gathered into datasets and formats readily accessed and used by engineering, for evaluation of repair trends and detection of needed design modifications, and by program managers and logistics analysts, to assess logistics needs and fleet aircraft support requirements based on the frequency and types of repairs experienced over time.

Keywords:
Finite Element Analysis, Relational Database, Expert System, Composite Material Repair