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Pushing the Boundaries of Machinery Prognostics |
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Sentient Corporation
Idaho Office850 Energy Drive Suite 307, Office 428 Idaho Falls, ID 83401 P: (208) 522-8560 F: (208) 522-8639 Email Us |
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Comprehensive health monitoring systems are fielded on some Navy aircraft, including the rotorcraft Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) on a subset of the Navy’s H-60 and H-53 inventory. Due to the early successes and benefits shown by these systems, installation of HUMS on additional rotorcraft is planned, and new platforms such as JSF will have even more comprehensive Prognostic Health Monitoring (PHM) capabilities. These systems generate enormous amounts of data on component and subsystem operation and health. Sentient Corporation investigated the needs of maintainers and data analysts who actually utilize the existing health monitoring systems. The key issue that emerged was that the volume of data produced by these systems is now greater than the capacity of the human analysts to review it. There are already examples of component failures that have occurred where the aircraft sensors detected the problem beforehand, but due to the analysis backlog, the data could not be reviewed before the component failed. Clearly, as the number of aircraft equipped with HUMS and PHM continues to increase, there is a critical need to automate analysis of this data. [Click to read more]
Rolling element bearings in aircraft are critical to aircraft operation and safety. These bearings operate in extreme conditions, transmitting high loads, spinning at high speeds, and enduring harsh environments. Bearings and gears in the JSF lift fan drive system, for example, must endure high loads and accelerations, temperatures of 150 °C, and pitch velocities up to 25,000 ft/min. Bearings in the engine hot path must operate up to 300 °C. Future engines are expected to operate at even higher temperatures. [Click to read more]
Pilots and front-line maintenance crews shouldn’t have to think about health monitoring until a real fault exists. Their job is to turn planes around; they can’t afford to waste time on false alarms or managing data. Existing monitoring technologies are susceptible to false alarms, especially in highly dynamic systems like military aircraft. Traditionally this complexity has been handled by adjusting alarm thresholds, which sacrifice sensitivity. With Sentient’s unique Prognostic Integration Architecture (PIA), this tradeoff is no longer necessary. PIA eliminates simplistic thresholds by tightly coupling diagnostics with predictive prognostics, utilizing the knowledge embedded in each to achieve high sensitivity, early fault detection, and accurate remaining life prediction. PIA is modular enough to be adapted to almost any application, and the onboard components are compact, efficient, and require little storage. [Click to read more]
Bearings are critical wearing components in almost every type of machinery. Sentient’s Contact Analysis for Bearing Prognostics (CABPro) software is an advanced physics-based model of bearing spall propagation that can predict remaining life from the first detection of a problem. While techniques to monitor vibration and detect spalls have been around for a while, CABPro is the first tool for accurate prediction of remaining life. The technology behind CABPro is the result of nearly a decade of bearing failure research, extensive physical testing, and detailed analysis of the material-level phenomena involved in rolling contact fatigue. In fact, our experiments were the first to demonstrate that spall propagation is repeatable and predictable. CABPro can be adapted to almost any bearing application, and was recently used in the DARPA Prognosis Program. |
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