Life Usage and Health Assessment of Drivetrain Splines in Support of Condition Based Maintenance (CBM)

Given the drivetrain issues on the tail rotor splined shaft for the Seahawk, there is a need for robust tools that will provide better design guidance, provide current health status as well as provide prognostic capabilities for gearbox splines. To meet this need, Impact Technologies, LLC proposes to develop and demonstrate a spline health assessment and prognosis system that will utilize physics-based spline lifing models in conjunction with vibration data to produce actionable life usage and health assessment feedback. We intend to create a comprehensive technology suite that will accurately and quickly assess the impact of past and future vehicle usage on spline health status and therefore, on overall gearbox and vehicle reliability and mission readiness. The approach will consist of identifying and quantifying spline faults including fretting-fatigue-induced crack initiation and subsequent crack propagation. Accurately characterizing the current health will allow improved estimates for remaining useable life. The development of spline health models will require modeling, material characterization, and testing as well as the use of sensor data and tuned vibration-based feature algorithms.