Initial Spare Parts of the A400M Aircraft
Abstract
The A400M is a new military transport aircraft, which is designed and built to fill the gap between strategic and tactical capabilities of modern air forces, among which is the Turkish Air Force. To be successful in this endeavor, high aircraft availability is essential. Aircraft availability is affected by selection of spare parts and components availability at the repair facilities. This thesis study seek to determine which spare parts the Turkish Air Force should procure for the A400M, in order to attain the balance between aircraft availability and the cost of spare parts. The Aircraft Sustainability Model (ASM) by LMI is chosen to calculate the essential spare part support. ASM provides the optimal cost vs. availability curve and it is widely used for provisioning, replenishment, and deployment spares decisions. In general, this study develops an ASM model for the A400M aircraft with various fleet sizes, and compares the results to determine the optimal spare part mix. Conclusions which are drawn from the ASM experiments and analysis provides sufficient information to construct the optimal cost vs. availability curve of the A400M aircraft under the Turkish Air Force?s maintenance structure. This curve provides critical information for the military decision makers to determine tradeoffs between availability and cost, in order to obtain a better use of scarce resources. The study also provides important insights about the characteristics of the A400M aircraft, such as the optimal availability and the supply cost distribution among the A400M subsystems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 08, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADB378348
Entities
People
- Ihsan Topaloglu
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology