Starting in the summer of 2008, RMCI, Inc. was tasked with optimizing the number of rotations in synchronous time averages (STA) in Apache gear systems. STAs are an integral component of condition based maintenance (CBM). Synchronous time averaging is a method for processing a vibration signal to remove everything except the vibrations from a single rotating shaft and its attached gear. Ideally, an STA contains only the vibration components of a shaft and gear of interest.

RMCI, Inc. concluded that the number of rotations in the STA could be safely reduced by half. This does not reduce the amount of data that is stored because asynchronous time domain data is already discarded, but this reduction allows for shorter data acquisitions and shorter data processing times. As a result, pilots are more quickly alerted to potential mechanical failures. Also, the health and usage monitoring system is able to provide more computational availability to other tasks. With further investigation, these findings can be applied across the fleet of Army helicopters to leverage the benefits of this study across platforms.