OLM: A hands-on approach

Abstract

With increasing costs and shrinking budgets, there is considerable economic pressure to get the most out of existing aircraft extending their in-service life if possible and to do so in a manner that does not compromise flight safety. One of the methods to achieve this is Operational Loads Monitoring (OLM). This paper presents an overview of military aircraft OLM programs, the typical parameters they measure and how they store and analyse the data. The research utilizes case studies of four aircraft for which ACRA CONTROL provided the data acquisition systems. The paper focuses on the data acquisition technology used to measure the flight parameters, the data processing and storage and how this data is processed on the ground. Finally, some of the technology and other improvements that have allowed newer OLM systems to provide a better fatigue profile of the aircraft are described. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.