Integrated Diagnostics & Prognostics for Prediction of Aircraft Electronic System Power Supply Failures & Useful Life Remaining

Impact Technologies, in cooperation with The Northrop Grumman Corporation and Harris Government Communications Systems (developer of electronic power supplies for the JSF), proposes to develop and demonstrate an on-board integrated diagnostic/prognostic system for assessing the remaining useful life of aircraft electronic system power supplies. Implementation of the prognostic and health management (PHM) concept requires an ability to relate equipment health state information, including operational history and detection of incipient faults, to accurate remaining useful life predictions at any point in the system’s life cycle. The dominant failure modes of switching mode power supplies were identified by a Pareto analysis in the Phase I program and will provide the prioritization of the approaches taken in this Phase II Program. The Phase II program described herein will integrate collaborative diagnostic and prognostic techniques from engineering disciplines including statistical reliability modeling, damage accumulation models, physics of failure modeling, and sensor-based condition monitoring using automated reasoning algorithms. Novel features extracted from sensed parameters such as temperature, power quality, and load will be analyzed using advanced fault detection and damage accumulation algorithms. Using model-based assessments in the absence of fault indications, and updating the model-based assessments with sensed information when it becomes available provides health state awareness at any point in time. Intelligent fusion of this diagnostic information with historical component reliability statistics will provide a robust health state awareness as the basis for accurate prognostic predictions. Complementary prognostic techniques including analysis of projected operating conditions by physics-based component aging models, empirical (trending) models, and system level failure progression models will be used to develop verifiable prognostic models. The Phase II program will emphasize accelerated failure testing of relevant switching mode power supplies made available from our partners. An IPT has been formed consisting of Impact, VEXTEC, Ridgetop, Northrop Grumman, Smiths, Harris and NG, that will work together and provide the “best of breed” technologies that can be applied to JSF specific SMPS.