Data Driven Prognostic techniques for airborne laser systems.

Qualtech Systems, Inc. and HR Textron, Inc., team seeks to provide data-driven prognostic models and techniques for predicting system malfunctioning events prior to their occurrence in airborne lasers. The events of interest include lasing, spectral,tilt, calibration, calorimetric, polarization, and wavefront, range, range rate, and pointing errors, beam jitter/smearing effects, thermal blooming phenomenon, engagement geometry errors, and turbulence effects caused by incipient fault conditions andsystem disturbances. The end product of the proposed effort is not just a collection of new data-driven prognostic techniques for residual generation, residual evaluation for emerging malfunction detection and isolation (i.e., time and location of faults),fault diagnosis (i.e., nature and cause of faults) and residual life estimation of the airborne laser (ABL) theater missile defense system; it is a complete and generic diagnosis and prognosis solution that utilizes the sensing capabilities that alreadyexist in the system to the greatest extent, while identifying new software capabilities that can be easily added onboard or on support equipment, to achieve maximum system availability within reasonable cost. In most systems, the initial cost of thehardware and software of the monitoring system is easily offset by the savings in support and maintenance costs within a year. The product resulting from Phases I and II of the research proposed herein will be a ready-to-use plug-in module for use incommercial and military condition assessment and health monitoring systems. It will be marketed to the defense industry for applications in missile defense systems (ABL, AAS, THAAD), unmanned combat vehicles (UAVs, UCAVs,USVs), shipboard and aircraftsystems, and to commercial industry for use in applications such as commercial aircraft, power, manufacturing, chemical processes, transportation, and industrial machines/equipment