The TATEM (Technologies And Techniques for nEw Maintenance concept) project has two objectives: to move from diagnosis to prognosis in order to anticipate a failure before it occurs, and to reduce the costs of helicopter maintenance by 20% over five to ten years. To do this, a number of solutions are proposed.

The aim of TATEM is to increase aircraft operability, i.e. the availability and operational reliability of an aircraft, while reducing the overall maintenance costs.
To achieve this, the overall technical solution proposed is Health and Usage Monitoring System, which concerns both onboard and ground-based maintenance in four domains: structure, landing gear, systems, and engines.

The approach focuses on the interpretation of maintenance data along two important lines: diagnosis and, above all, prognosis to anticipate a failure before it occurs for better management of maintenance scheduling.
“In the future, mission interruptions and downtimes will decrease significantly as it will be possible to schedule the maintenance intelligently according to the actual health status of the aircraft at any given moment,” explains Jean-Pierre Derain, the Eurocopter Technical Manager for the project.

Technically speaking, 'gradual damage' indicators will be used throughout the life cycle of the aircraft (engines, systems, etc.) in order to establish a Health Based Maintenance Planning, which is more flexible and takes the actual use of the helicopter into account.
The status of the structural components (damage, failure detection, etc.) will be known in real time thanks to an automatic inspection performed by a data centralizer using sensors on the helicopter. Finally, the stocks of spare parts will be matched to the health of the helicopter and certain parts or sub-assemblies will no longer need to be stored in great quantities.

Facilitating Maintenance Operations
TATEM also tackles the development of ground maintenance equipment. The research focuses on nomad device-type solutions, so that the technician can use tools such as goggles on which the mainte- nance documentation is displayed. The result is that it will be much easier for the technician to operate in a practical and rapid way.
Finally, TATEM also looks to improve technical documentation so that the ground maintenance technician will be able to employ advanced tools using new 3D illustration technology. This means the technician will access the right information, in the right place, with a minimum of effort, in a minimum amount of time.

The overall Health Management solution also integrates remote maintenance, which transfers the maintenance reports providing information on the failures that have arisen during the flight (along with any prognosis performed) via the air-to-ground radio relay channel. The goal is to improve the responsiveness of the teams on the ground, who will be able to prepare the replacement parts before the aircraft has even landed.