Advanced Prognostic and Health Management (PHM) and Model Based Prognostic Useful Life Remaining Capabilities for Aircraft Tactical Information and Co

Prognostics and health management technologies are critical for detecting impending equipment failures and enabling a proactive decision process for maintaining or replacing components before actual failures occur. This capability is particularly critical to the Joint Strike Fighter given the goals for high affordability and mission readiness. Achieving the gains in maintenance decision making, safety, system availability, productivity, and cost savings, depends on the PHM system’s ability to predict accurately the remaining useful life of the aircraft mission systems at any time. This effort investigates the development of advanced prognostic models to enable the predictive capability of the JSF PHM system. The effort considers the application of real-time, sensory- updated, residual life based models for estimating and predicting the remaining useful life of the JSF Communication, Navigation and Identification systems. The effort researches and characterizes the detectable impeding faults, and the physical phenomena, of the system and component degradation processes. The expected patterns in the sensory information and the techniques required to model the evolution of the component degradation process, in order to predict the remaining useful life of a system, are identified. A system definition, capability implementation plan, and a proof-of-concept demonstration of the approach are part of this effort.