ePHM System Development, Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing, Fault Tree, and FMECA Applied to and Integrated on NASA Hybrid Electric Testbeds

Hybrid-Electric distributed propulsion (HEDP) is becoming widely accepted and new tools will be required for future development with validation and demonstrations during ground and eventually flight testing. Intelligent health management will be paramount to any future ground and flight testing activities planned by the industry on HEDP systems. To support this, an intelligent prognostics and health management (ePHM) system will be designed and executed for the HEDP system on the NASA Dryden Hybrid Electric Integrated System Teststand (HEIST) (AirVolt optional), which will be developed as part of a parallel Phase III SBIR by ESAero, the proposer here. Most developments in PHM surround air vehicle subsystems and avionics, specifically on the electronic board level, and many of these are integrated after the systems are designed. These developments have or are establishing the ability to monitor the degradation of a subsystem in real-time, making it conceivable that actionable information can be fed to a Integrated Autonomous Controller for self-repair decisions, leveraging the Propulsion Airframe Integration benefits. Reliability can be calculated and maintenance can be planned ahead of time rather than at the point of failure, significantly increasing safety. General Atomics, Electromagnetic Systems Group (GA) will continue to play a vital role.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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