NLign Analytics Wins Contract to Improve F-35 Maintenance

NLign wins a contract to replace the F-35’s manual Mylar trace-and-transfer damage mapping process with a faster, digital photograph-based approach.
The current F-35 repair concept of operations (CONOPS) for any significant coating or structural damage requires a trace and transfer approach to capture structural damage location, size and orientation. This is a cumbersome, time-consuming process that involves tracing damage onto a large, clear piece of Mylar that is sent to Lockheed Martin (LM) engineers, who “eye-ball” a mapping onto 3D models for repair design.

The objective of this program is to develop an alternative approach: a digital photograph-based approach. This new approach replaces the Mylar with a digital photograph from a standard commercial camera. The photograph can be emailed from the inspectors to the structural engineers, who can then easily extract the damage from the photograph and map it onto 3D models.

Benefit: A significant reduction in the time required to repair aircraft structural damage.

In order for an acceptable repair to be designed, engineers spend countless hours collecting information about the structure to be analyzed and finding information on similar repairs and analysis completed in the past for a given location. This results in engineers spending a lot of “non-value added time” just collecting the necessary information before they can process it. In many cases, existing information isn’t found, and the analysis is completed without it.

The Navy has performed time studies on the F/A-18 structural repair process and projects that NLign will reduce the average structural engineering disposition time from 14 hours per damage to 3 hours — a 78 percent reduction. The benefits of using this technology on the F-35 program are expected to be similar to the results seen by the USN for the F/A-18. Given the reduction in engineering analysis time, the benefits will also include increased aircraft availability.