Integrating IVHM and Asset Design

Abstract

Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) describes a set of capabilities that enable effective and efficient maintenance and operation of the target vehicle. It accounts for the collecting of data, conducting analysis, and supporting the decision-making process for sustainment and operation. The design of IVHM systems endeavours to account for all causes of failure in a disciplined, systems engineering, manner. With industry striving to reduce through-life cost, IVHM is a powerful tool to give forewarning of impending failure and hence control over the outcome. Benefits have been realised from this approach across a number of different sectors but, hindering our ability to realise further benefit from this maturing technology, is the fact that IVHM is still treated as added on to the design of the asset, rather than being a sub-system in its own right, fully integrated with the asset design. The elevation and integration of IVHM in this way will enable architectures to be chosen that accommodate health ready sub-systems from the supply chain and design trade-offs to be made, to name but two major benefits. Barriers to IVHM being integrated with the asset design are examined in this paper. The paper presents progress in overcoming them, and suggests potential solutions for those that remain. It addresses the IVHM system design from a systems engineering perspective and the integration with the asset design will be described within an industrial design process.

Platform health management for aircraft maintenance – a review

“…67 Despite these benefits, adopting IVHM has its own considerable economic and cultural barriers, with the main challenges being its acceptance 13 and the cost of hardware and software required to execute IVHM tasks. [68][69][70] This cost covers the improvement and implementation of sensors and software for processing data, as well as penalties for additional weight, power, and computing resources. 10 A cultural shift is required for every user of an IVHM system to accept the weakness of IVHM induced faults, such as false alarms and sensor failure, especially in cases where integration is fairly easy (for instance with Skywise) 60 and additional systems like sensors are not necessary or the already existing ones can be relied upon.…”

“…Rajamani et al123 'IVHM describes a set of capabilities that enable sustainable and safe operation of components and subsystems within aerospace platforms'. Jennions et al68 'IVHM describes a set of capabilities that enable effective and efficient maintenance and operation of the target vehicle. It accounts for the collecting of data, conducting analysis, and supporting the decision-making process for sustainment and operation'.…”

Digital Simulation and Identification of Faults with Neural Network Reasoners in Brushed Actuators Employed in an E-Brake System

“…In case abnormal equipment behaviour is observed during the vehicle operation, proper arrangements can be made to address the issue and decrease the probability of a dangerous situation. By using the data generated by the health monitoring systems, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) benefit by using the data generated by the aircraft to improve the existing systems for more optimal performance or develop new ones more suited for operation [6].…”

“…With the increasing availability of data, development of technology with the internetof-things (IoT) components, and the realisation that such data can be used to make better decisions for system design and maintainability, the field of IVHM is attracting high-profile stakeholders who are keen to determine and tap its full potential. Prognostics and diagnosis of aircraft systems carried out by health monitoring assets provide such stakeholders with valuable data to detect abnormalities, optimise maintenance schedules, and for better estimations of the system remaining useful life (RUL) [6][7][8].…”