Determine Test Requirements

Explanation

This activity is used to identify testing requirements which will ensure that the asset is still compliant with the certification requirements of the relevant certification authority. It is a manual process whereby certified maintenance personnel review the contents of the various maintenance activities performed, and then determine the extent of testing required to ensure that the asset can meet its certification requirements.

As part of heavy maintenance activities various critical components and functions can be affected due to:

• The inspection of a specific area, zone or function
• Replacement of critical safety components
• Dislodging of components as a result of removals to gain access etc.

Often these changes will include functional checks as part of the maintenance activities which may be described fully in the maintenance manual for the asset. However, at times, these functional checks focus on the specific maintenance activity performed and not necessarily on ensuring that a full system and functional capability is ensured.

In most instances, two forms of testing requirements can be identified:

• Flight Check - Post maintenance check flights may be carried out following maintenance activities on an aircraft to provide reassurance of handling characteristics, performance or to establish the correct functioning of a system that cannot be fully established during ground testing.
• Ground Functional Testing - These functional tests focus on those activities which can be checked on the ground to fully establish that the asset meets the certification requirements and can cover for instance,
  • Ground runs, to determine that the engines come up to correct operating temperature or for the extraction of oil and fluid samples for spectrometric oil analysis programs.
  • Taxi tests, to check nose wheel steering or braking effectiveness
  • Flight control movement checks

Once the process of identifying the requirements for testing is completed, engineers and planners need to determine how to execute and validate identified requirements. The required steps or process of tests to be performed can be documented and attached to the relevant tasks which could be carried out as validation activities. For more information, refer to the Raise Operational Test Task and Raise Test Requirement activities.

Prerequisites

To determine test requirements, maintenance activities requiring special checks, testing procedures or validation to conform with release to service requirements must have been identified.

System Effects

N/A