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Excessive time spent maintaining aircraft reduces asset availability, increases personnel requirements, and complicates logistics and supply chain management. Predictive maintenance is a cost effective strategy where maintenance is scheduled in response to data on present condition (diagnosis) and predictions of future condition (prognosis).

On-board systems that provide accurate, real-time diagnostic and prognostic information can also significantly improve safety and reliability. Predictive maintenance has large financial and operational benefits for existing aircraft, and will be critical to the success of newer, more complex designs such as the Joint Strike Fighter. [Click to read more]

Prognostic health management (PHM) offers significant savings in maintenance costs, increased asset availability, and improved safety over traditional maintenance approaches for aerospace and other complex or critical systems. Prognostic management of equipment health should include both analysis of what is already occurring (diagnosis) and prediction of what might occur in the future (prognosis).

For many applications, diagnostic technologies are now available that can detect an incipient fault well before it becomes severe enough to warrant maintenance action. However, technologies that accurately predict the future progression of a fault have lagged behind. [Click to read more]

Bearing faults in momentum/reaction wheels and control moment gyros are a significant life- and performance-limiting factor in spacecraft. Even when complete failure does not occur, problems with excessive bearing torque and torque noise can drain power and negatively impact vibration sensitive instruments. The failure mechanisms in these applications and the monitoring technologies needed are significantly different from most terrestrial and aircraft systems. [Click to read more]

This paper describes a comprehensive experimental study of bearing spall progression and a physics-based model being developed for bearing prognostics. The model computes the spall growth trajectory and time to failure based on operating conditions, and uses diagnostic feedback to self-adjust and reduce prediction uncertainty. [Click to read more]

A fundamental problem in the development and validation of PHM technologies is the general shortage of realistic fault signature data. While healthy signatures can be obtained from operational systems, faults are relatively rare and difficult to observe. Several examples are presented comparing simulated vibration signals to actual test data. [Click to read more]

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