Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) for Digital Electronics Using Existing Parameters and Measurands

In response to SBIR topic N05-093, Impact Technologies proposes to develop and demonstrate an onboard integrated prognostics and health management (PHM) system for aircraft digital electronic boards. The proposed non-invasive PHM system, consisting primarily of advanced software and a minimal sensor array, will be capable of detecting incipient faults, predicting the remaining useful life of critical components, and recommending corrective maintenance actions. This system will integrate collaborative diagnostic and prognostic techniques from engineering disciplines including statistical reliability modeling, damage accumulation models, physics of failure modeling, signal processing and feature extraction, and automated reasoning algorithms. In this approach, cradle-to-grave health state awareness is achieved through the use of model-based assessments in the absence of fault indications, and by updating these model-based assessments with sensed information when it becomes available. Based on this solid foundation of health state information, complementary prognostic techniques including analysis of projected operating conditions by physics-based component damage accumulation/aging models, empirical (trending) models, and system-level failure progression models will be used to develop verifiable prognostic algorithms. The proposed approach, diagnostic techniques, and prognostic models will be demonstrated through seeded fault testing on a relevant commercially available digital electronic board. Only through the utilization of all of these sources of engineering information can the Navy fully realize the PHM concept for digital electronic boards on the JSF.