Method for detecting damage to a rotor of an aircraft

A method for detecting damages to a rotor of an aircraft, wherein the aircraft comprises actuators for active vibration reduction, the method comprising the following steps:

• determining actuator variables in a reference flight of the aircraft, wherein the actuator variables determined in the reference flight of the aircraft are used for active vibration reduction with the actuators;
• plotting the actuator variables of respective data range tiles determined in the reference flight of the aircraft in first coordinates of a coordinate system, wherein the coordinate system contains numerous closed and non-overlapping data range tiles, wherein the coordinates are also assigned to respective data range tiles, and wherein numerous coordinates can be plotted in a data range tile;
• obtaining the number of actuator variables in the reference flight of the aircraft that are located in each data range tile;
• eliminating the data range tiles that have a number of actuator variables lying below a limit value for this in the reference flight of the aircraft to create a reference flight signature;
• determining actuator variables for a flight-specific signature, wherein the actuator variables determined in the flight of the aircraft are used for vibration reduction with the actuators;
• plotting the actuator variables determined in the flight of the aircraft in second coordinates of the coordinate system, wherein the coordinate system contains numerous data range tiles, wherein the second coordinates are also assigned to data range tiles, wherein numerous coordinates can be plotted in a data range tile, and wherein the data range tiles of the flight-specific signature are identical to the data range tiles of the reference flight signature;
• obtaining the number of actuator variables in the flight of the aircraft that are located in each data range tile;
• eliminating the data range tiles that have a number of actuator variables in the flight of the aircraft that lies below a limit value for this to create the flight-specific signature;
• and
• comparing the respective data range tiles from the flight-specific signature and the reference flight signature, wherein, if a limit value for the number of data range tiles deviating between the flight-specific signature and the reference flight signature is exceeded, a warning signal regarding a damage detection is issued.