Hi. Can you help me to understand what is a HUMS? I know that it is used in the helicopters for safety reasons, and the meaning is Health Usage Monitoring System.
If you know more, tell me please. Greetings from Simone Barbera.
HUM is rotor noise in helicopter that requires monitoring. Vibrations may also affect the health of the person as vibration may make the lags to swell and finally lag may become numb (jet-lag).
Perhaps HUMS is a blackbox and may record many parameters.
Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) refers to equipment, techniques, and/or proceduresapplied to helicopter rotors, transmissions and engines by which selected incipient failure ordegradation and/or selected aspects of service history can be determined.Health monitoring relates to determination of incipient failure or degradation and the prime means ofmonitoring used within HUMS is vibration health monitoring.Usage monitoring System relates to determination of selected aspects of service history.The recommendation of the CAA-commissioned HARP report in 1984 was a major trigger for thedevelopment of HUMS that could be retrofitted onto existing rotorcraft and incorporated into newhelicopter types.CAA-funded operational trials between 1987 and 1991 of two prototype HUMS led to two productionsystems that entered routine service in 1991.The development of a HUMS capable of providing useful warnings of impending failure of the manyhundreds of critical parts within a rotorcraft drive train was a major technical challenge. Theimportance of this challenge was demonstrated as the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch wereable to identify 6 UK accidents in the seven year period before the service introduction of HUMS thatHUMS could have prevented.In the UK, vibration health monitoring systems have been made mandatory on large helicopterscertified or validated since certification requirements were tightened by the CAA after the HARP reportby the introduction of the so called 'design assessment requirements' (subsequently incorporated intothe JAA and FAA certification requirements). An Additional Airworthiness Directive also madevibration health monitoring systems mandatory in the UK on older types carrying more than 9passengers in 1999. Currently over 100 UK helicopters of seven types are equipped with one of fourdifferent CAA approved HUMS.Worldwide there have been over 2 million flying hours of HUMS experience (equivalent to about 20years of UK operation). Internationally HUMS has been widely adopted by oil companies as a basicrequirement when chartering large helicopters.As early as 1997 studies by the CAA showed that HUMS were able to provide warnings for 69% ofthe failure types and that they warned successfully in 60% of all the potentially catastrophic failurecases. A further study by the CAA's Helicopter Health Monitoring Advisory Group (HHMAG) showedthat incidents of serious vibration occurring in-flight had reduced dramatically in the UK fleet after theintroduction of these systems. HUMS routinely identify mechanical problems in-service.A major independent study in Norway into helicopter safety has concluded that these systems were'probably the most significant isolated safety improvement of the last decade'. The same study statedthat HUMS is 'expected to mature over the next decade and will probably contribute to a further riskimprovement'.The CAA believes that the vibration health monitoring capability of HUMS has been shown to be aneffective and practical means of reducing mechanical failures and, most importantly, those failuresthat prevent continued safe flight and landing.Details of the harmonized JAA/FAA advisory material on the certification of HUMS can be found at:http://www2.faa.gov/certification/aircraft/Rot_Pol_Hums_Ac.htm.
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Prof. (Dr.) Shyam, Managing Director for Sensors Technology Private Limited. Gwalior, MP474001, India.
You might check out a company called Intelligent Automation Corporation (www.iac-online.com), considered world leaders in HUMS technology by companies such as Bell, Boeing, etc. HUMS has had a lot of misinformation associated with it, so the US Army commissed new research to create a system that operated effectively. Check out a recent article in Rotor & Wing Magazine fetauring the applciation on Apache AH-64 HUMS technology. You should be able to obtain the article free. Go to the October 2006 issue of R&W at www.accessintel.com...or IAC's website.
HUMS
Re: HUMS
