As an old fart and one who has like
the posters in this thread enjoyed the discussions re the new and developing technology available to engineers in the quest of safety in the critical areas mainly the rotor drive system. I really don’t want to continue to be pessimistic but do understand the limitations to any fault monitoring system. As has been shown HUMS is a basic trending system, it will generate alerts; identify trending and progressive deterioration of bearings, tooth mesh, gear condition and changing general harmonics within selective parts of the drive train. The effectiveness of the system is down to the system design, computer programme and the ground operator monitoring the system.
Question, can this system in its present mode of operation pick out and alert the pilot/engineer to a possible instant failure, guess the answer is NO. (Based on the limited info available)
Question 2, is the pilot in the loop regarding the data and results of the HUMS system while in flight, answer NO.
Question 3, should he be? How could this be achieved and how could this be included in his ECL action response.
O