Impact Technologies has developed an on-board integrated diagnostic/prognostic system for assessing the useful life remaining of aircraft electronic system power supplies. This program integrates 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.
The technology developed involved the following steps:
- Identification of the dominant failure modes of switching mode power supplies by a Pareto analysis of historical reliability data.
- Extraction of novel features from sensed parameters such as temperature, power quality, and transient load response.
- Analysis using advanced fault detection and damage accumulation algorithms.
- Use of model-based assessments in the absence of fault indications, and updating the model-based assessments with sensed information when it becomes available to provide health state awareness at any point in time.
- Intelligent fusion of diagnostic information with historical component reliability statistics.
- Complementary prognostic techniques including analysis of projected operating conditions by physics-based component aging models, empirical (trending) models, and system level failure progression models.
