Impact of the degree of hybridization on the reliability and system safety of a Helicopter’s traction drive based on Lz-transform approach

This chapter describes the impact of the degree of hybridization (DoH) of a helicopter’s traction drive on its reliability and its system safety. In order to demonstrate this dependency, the chapter attempts to evaluate the availability and fault tolerance of different topologies of the helicopter traction drive, treated as multistate system (MSS): conventional, hybrid-electric, and full-electric. The entire traction drive reliability assessment is based on the reliability evaluation of the system components. A specified approach called Lz-transform has been introduced for availability and fault tolerance analysis of various MSS helicopter’s traction drives, which can dramatically improve computational efficiency compared to the classical Markov method. Additionally, with the different requirements for the reliability and system safety, recommendations for determining the appropriate traction drive topology can be suggested at an early design stage.