Alumnus Wins Marshall-Tan Vertical Flight Award

The award is presented to an individual under the age of 35 who has made an outstanding contribution to vertical flight in the preceding calendar year. It is named and presented in the Spirit of John Marshall and Robert Tan, two exceptionally promising young engineers who are remembered by their friends and associates at Sikorsky Aircraft.

The 2005 award was awarded to Andy Bernhard for advancing the state of the art of Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) through the design, development, integration and testing of the Integrated Vehicle Health Management System (IVHMS) for the UH-60M aircraft.

The Integrated Vehicle Health Management System (IVHMS) is included as baseline equipment on the SIKORSKY UH-60M BLACK HAWK. IVHMS is an on board real time data collection system that interfaces digitally with the avionics architecture and mechanically with the drive train.

The primary functionalities integrated into the system are i) Crash Survivable Voice and Data Recording (including an underwater locating beacon) for crash investigation analysis; and ii) Health and Usage Monitoring (HUMS) for enhanced maintenance and fleet management.

The HUMS capability includes usage and exceedance recording, rotor track and balance data collection and adjustment computation and mechanical diagnostics (including bearing monitoring).

The IVHMU design provides flexibility for hardware and software customization and growth. IVHMS is currently in flight test in WPB (first flight 4 April 2006) and is part of the UH-60M production configuration (LRIP deliveries start in 2006).

Published April 25, 2006