Smartphones and tablets now provide augmented reality, a technology that infuses data into our standard view of the world to make it more meaningful. For MRO applications, augmented reality may initially be most useful for inventory and asset tracking, but it may eventually assist maintenance technicians in doing non-invasive repairs. Conduce Group, a British app developer for aerospace companies, is already working on a few tools that use augmented reality technology, most notably a program called Line Engineer AR. The application would allow an aircraft technician to use the app's geolocation capabilities to find the specific tail number of the aircraft that he or she was working on and drill down into the maintenance data for each part. The information would show the maintenance data of each part and would allow the technician to easily see if he has to correct any defects. Paul Saunders, operations director for Conduce Group, says that an app like this "is absolutely possible today," provided that aircraft were outfitted with identifiers for geolocation and correct maintenance and aircraft data could be obtained to make it work. Photo Credit: Conduce Group

Identifying and isolating electrical faults in aircraft electrical subsystem wiring presents myriad challenges for the line maintenance expert. For starters, it is cumbersome to check each component's wiring structure to find problems. Testing the wiring with a multimeter in a pin-to-pin fashion requires two engineers and takes hundreds of individual measurements—and pinpointing the exact cause of system failures takes a lot of time. But one small Montreal-based company called Technologies Harness Scanner has changed all of that with the HS2000, a portable wire testing innovation that is going to surely gain traction against airlines around the world in 2012. Technologies Harness Scanner has invented an automated testing equipment system for aircraft wiring harnesses that takes the guesswork out of finding and repairing electrical problems in an aircraft. According to Alain Lussier, creator of the device, a full level A diagnostic test of 100 to 1,000 individual test points on any given aircraft subsystem could happen in just 15-45 minutes. That timeframe includes everything from connecting the system to putting it away. The automated testing equipment consists of a test unit box connected to a special mating interface cable, which has connectors on its end that read data from different test points on an aircraft subsystem. Photo Credit: Technologies Harness Scanner

American RFID tag manufacturer RFID Tag Source already has introduced its high-memory, passive AeroTag ST, which can store maintenance and birth information for many types of major components. But the tag company hopes to outdo itself in 2012 by introducing the AeroTag HT, an RFID tag especially designed to operate in high temperatures. Like the AeroTag ST, this tag can operate globally under changing frequencies and also attach to metal surfaces. The difference is that it can operate at higher temperatures without losing functionality. Pratt & Whitney has confirmed that it is in the process of testing the tag for its engines with hopes that the RFID tags' data could help with maintenance and overhaul of the engine, as well as with the process of building the engine back up to its primary configuration. Kevin Donahue, managing director of RFID Tag Source, says that the new AeroTag will be able to withstand temperatures of 300F and that it is designed to last for several years in that environment. Donahue says that the key feature of the new high-temperature tag will be that it has the option of sealing to the engine in a mechanical fashion that matches the size of the component's existing data plate, which is about 1-by-2-by-0.27 in. "People can use the same existing nameplate that we're using now with their RFID tag underneath it," says Donahue. Photo Credit: RFID Tag Source

Although Lufthansa Technik's VIP Completion Center in Hamburg has put together hundreds of chic cabins for high-profile customers, no amount of expertise has been able to eliminate one of the most dreaded parts of finishing the cabins—the fitcheck. To solve this issue, the Lufthansa Technik engineering and IT staff have created a new process known as the "virtual" fitcheck, which allows the crew to perform fittings with the help of a three-dimensional virtual reality environment. The goal is to make sure that most of the cabin parts fit perfectly nearly every time. Lufthansa Technik will run a proprietary algorithm that asks the system 10,000 questions about the components installed in the cabin. When all of the modeling data is intact, the engineers then design the new interior within the modeling program. That data is then turned into a 3D world, or a 12-m. square glass cube called a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE). Two to three technicians view the data projected onto the walls of the 3D environment with 3D glasses, similar to those stocked in movie theaters. They also wear slippers as to not scratch the glass floor, which serves as another data surface thanks to a projector beaming down from above. By using the 3D environment, these technicians are able to easily spot inconsistencies in the design and make detailed modifications before the new cabin is actually intact. Photo Credit: Lufthansa Technik

With a few good tools, MROs can harness the power of digital design data and repair manuals to make their repair process easier. But digital paperwork also has caught on for training purposes, and especially appreciated by the tech-savvy young engineers who want everything available at their fingertips in an instant. SR Technics announced in October 2011 that it would start to offer course manuals and materials via the iPad. Going digital not only makes it easier for students to find the repair manuals they need without carrying around 8,000 pages of data, but it enhances those publications with incident reports, images, videos and even cockpit voice recordings.SR Technics has launched a technical training Web shop that allows users to access real-time course information, sign up for classes and amass a list of previous training hours. Shown here is a screenshot of Gulfstream's "Planebook," an iPad tablet app that serves as an electronic document management system that includes aircraft flight manuals. Although this particular product is for business aircraft, companies like SR Technics are adopting similar technologies for their own applications. Photo Credit: Gulfstream

Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are sometimes construed by managers as time-wasting sites that limit the productivity of employees. But some software providers are seeing the main features of these sites—chatting, sharing photos and messaging—as ways to greatly impact worker productivity. In the past year or so, companies like Siemens and Dassault Systemes have integrated social networking into their product lifecycle management (PLM) products to allow employees to quickly draw on each other for knowledge. PLM allows the manufacturer of a product to envision the manufacturing, building and service processes of a product while designing it. Because there are so many steps of the supply chain and people involved in each stage of a product's lifecycle, social networking could help large teams visualize how to solve problems more effectively. One of the leaders in this type of social networking is Siemens, which has introduced a social media offering called Teamcenter. The program works with Microsoft's SharePoint collaborative software to integrate internal collaboration features, such as chatrooms that can be saved in Outlook. Shown here is Microsoft Lync, an online communication environment that allows colleagues to instant message their projects to one another. Photo Credit: Microsoft

It is no surprise that the number of tablet users is on the rise. According to mobile research firm ABI, 60 million tablets were expected to ship worldwide in 2011. The company also calculated that mobile tablets beat out netbook shipments for the first time in Q2 2011 with 13.6 million units. Netbooks, those little mini computers, only garnered 8.4 million shipments in that quarter. ABI says that this interest is driven by Apple's iPad 2, which made up 68% of the tablet shipments during that time. It is clear that the versatility and ease of tablets have caught on in the consumer world, but the MRO sector is still warming up to their use. Readers keeping up with aviation technology news will know that the onslaught of tablets in the aviation world is an old story. Notable stories include Fokker Services launching an iPad EFB in early 2011 for cargo airline Amapola and Alaska Airlines' announcement that it would issue the iPad as an EFB to pilots shortly thereafter. But now, tablet manufacturers are trying to deploy their products to MROs to streamline their line and base maintenance workflow. Photo Credit: Conduce Group

In the mid-1990s, blisks were new to aircraft engine design. A blisk is a rotor and its blades milled from a single piece of material. Like most trends in the MRO world, the repair innovation comes many years after the manufacturing, and commercial aircraft manufacturers are now figuring out how to best repair these parts. Because new engines incorporate blisks, the number in service are growing. Although many blisks are made from a nickel-chromium superalloy, they are still prone to foreign object debris, and their replacement is quite expensive. GE has been performing blended repairs on blisks since 2008. It involves blending out a small damaged piece on the blisk to bring it back to its serviceable limits. But blending is not as effective as a repair to partially restore the component with new material. GE is researching how to use laser deposition or electronic beam welding to add new material to the blisk. After that, a technician will perform adaptive machining of the part to bring it back to serviceable limits. GE says it will launch this repair for the CF34- 3B stage 1 compressor blisk, and it is working on repairs for the GEnx in the next five years. The next step of the partial restoration is to work on technologies to replace entire airfoils via repair, using methods such as translational friction welding. Photo Credit: GE

As aircraft such as the Boeing 787 start flying, engineers are finding ways to perform in-situ composite repairs that can be done without heating blankets. The National Research Council Canada (NRCC) is perfecting a bonding process that replaces the use of heating blankets to perform a bonded composite repair. The council's Structures and Materials Performance Lab has created a method of bonding called "conductive heating," an in-situ, out of autoclave bonding process. However, the team is still researching the best ways to use the repair on large structures. Unlike metallic structures, the heat transfer property of the material in the carbon-fiber reinforced polymer composites is not homogenous throughout the structure. So, the traditional method is to put heating blankets on a bonded composite repair, which is not always accurate. Because the blankets do not spread out along the whole composite part, the method has lead to uneven heating and weak bonds, says Nick Bellinger, aerospace structures group leader and a principal research officer at the NRCC. "Our bonding technology uses localized heating and it's very specialized and controlled by zones," says Bellinger. The conductive heating curing process uses heat transfer tiles, which are copper sheets with wire-wound strip heaters that power the different zones. This bonding technology can be used for composite-to-composite bonds or to bond composite patches to metallic structures. Photo Credit: National Research Council Canada

Last April, O&M reported the news that the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Technical Thermodynamics had begun ground testing an electric nose wheel for the Airbus A320, which was estimated to save about 400 liters (150 gal.) of kerosene. The wheel would power the aircraft forward and backwards without requiring power for the aircraft's main engine. Since then, it started working on a bigger fuel cell and Lufthansa Technik successfully demonstrated an electric taxi system on an A320-200's main landing gears on Dec. 7. LHT and partners L-3, Airbus, Lufthansa German Airlines and Fraport spent a few days in December testing aircraft performance and collecting data—including crew handling; aircraft parameters such as speed, steering, power supply and fuel control; and radar-based ground tests. The team will evaluate the test results in the first quarter and then determine the technology's feasibility and final design—including whether it would be best as a forward-fit or retrofit system. Some of its operational benefits should include fuel savings, reduced engine maintenance and emissions, and improved gate turnaround times due to not needing a tug. Photo Credit: Lee Ann Tegtmeier