The importance of preventive maintenance in terms of reliability in aviation sector

Abstract

Aircraft is a system that requires high reliability levels throughout flights. Preventive maintenance procedures are applied to maintain this reliability at an optimum level. The higher frequency of preventive maintenance applications means higher reliability level; however, very frequent application of preventive maintenance is not economical though. In order to obtain optimum benefit, this maintenance should be done at proper times. This study aims at explaining the importance of preventive maintenance mathematically. The mean time to failure (MTTF) or the mean time between failures (MTBF) is taken as the reliability criteria. The reliability values obtained when preventive maintenance is applied and not applied are compared to the MTTF.