Human Factors in Aircraft Inspection

Abstract

Inspection of both airframes and engines is a key activity in maintaining continuing airworthiness. Unless structural defects are detected at the appropriate time, structural failure may result. The reliability of the inspection system must be known in order to schedule safe inspection intervals. However, inspection reliability necessarily includes human inspector reliability so that knowledge of human inspection performance is vital to safety. This paper describes models of the major functions of the human inspector, and applies these within a framework of inspection reliability. From these models, and field experiments on inspectors a set of factors known to affect inspection reliability is derived. These can be used to define good practices necessary to continuously improve inspection performance.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2001
Accession Number
ADP010770

Entities

People

  • Colin G. Drury

Organizations

  • University at Buffalo

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aerospace Industry
  • Aircrafts
  • Airframes
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Engineering
  • False Alarms
  • Materials
  • Nondestructive Testing
  • Probability
  • Reliability
  • Signal Detection
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Test Methods
  • Transport Aircraft
  • Turbines
  • Warning Systems

Fields of Study

  • Engineering

Readers

  • Aviation Safety Risk Assessment.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Facility/Structural Engineering.