Detecting air leakage is key in the Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) centres, imperative to ensure the safety of the large vehicles such as transport aircraft. The procedure of pressurising the cabin to test for the air leak is time consuming and labour intensive and depending on other equipment such as Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) or engines to pressurise the cabin to simulate the required pressure differential to perform the air leakage. The existing method have some difficulties and issues particularly for the pressurisation, technicians’ safety and health, cabin structure expansion and fatigue, uncomfortable working environment inside the pressurised cabin, low efficiently and uncertainty of listening to air leak noise around windows and doors, and losing time to do other maintenance work inside and outside aircraft.
The reusable flexible vacuum blankets have been designed for an efficient and user-friendly air leakage detection procedure around doors and windows of large aircraft, without using air pressurisation. Using a vacuum blanket to cover the doors or windows, it is much easier to detect air leakage by a drop in the vacuum pressure under the blanket.
The size of the leak around aircraft doors and windows can be found using this vacuum pressure gauges on the vacuum pump. This will simplify the process of the air leakage detection and the assessment of seal replacement and repair around aircraft doors and windows.
To check the windows for leaks on a Boeing 747 using the pressurisation technique will typically take 5 hours, using vacuum blankets this time is reduced to 2 hours. The degree of accuracy is improved, other technicians can work on the plane simultaneously and worker safety is much improved.