Cleveland, Ohio – Bombardier has teamed up with Pratt & Whitney to develop and implement a data management service for the CSeries aircraft – part of the overall Bombardier Aircraft Health Management System (AHMS) capable of transmitting real-time and recorded data from the aircraft. The AHMS will facilitate remote troubleshooting and deliver accurate diagnostics for use by maintenance and flight crews.
Under this agreement, Pratt & Whitney's eFAST system will be the infrastructure unit used to perform data transmissions from the CSeries aircraft's on-board health management unit (HMU) to the ground. Along with Bombardier, they will make up the data acquisition structure which will automatically download, process, and store data that will be available for upload to respective customer portals.
The eFAST aircraft health monitoring system, designed and developed by Pratt & Whitney, is an on-board, near real-time data acquisition and transmission unit that automatically downloads, processes and stores data, then uploads it to a customer portal. The eFAST system enables operators to capture large amounts of critical aircraft system data for use in optimizing airline flight operations and maintenance cost.
An integral part of the CSeries aircraft design, ground system, and support tools, the AHMS is currently in the detailed design phase and will be available to operators at the aircraft's entry into service.
The AHMS is comprised of both on-board and ground system components. On the aircraft, the on-board maintenance system manages fault messages from all aircraft systems while the high-capacity recording and transmission health management unit affords airlines a degree of customization to manage aircraft data. The unit collects broad stream aircraft operation and performance data from every system during flight. Examples include avionics, flight controls, fly-by-wire, landing gear, braking systems, environmental control systems, thrust reversers, engines, electrical system, auxiliary power units (APUs) etc. On the ground, the AHMS system performs the detailed analysis of the transmitted on-board data to support a wide variety of operational decisions.
While CSeries aircraft operators will be the first to benefit from the AHMS, Bombardier is assessing the feasibility of equipping other in-development and in-service aircraft models with this tool.
Pratt & Whitney is also the supplier for the CSeries aircraft's PurePower Geared Turbofan engines.
Bombardier’s CSeries aircraft designed for the 100- to 149-seat, single-aisle market. Bombardier has booked orders and commitments for 603 CSeries aircraft, which include firm orders for 243 CSeries airliners.
Source: Bombardier Commercial Aircraft