An Approach to Health Management and Sustainability for Critical Aircraft Systems

Impact Technologies, in collaboration with the Georgia Institute of Technology and its industrial partners, proposes to develop and demonstrate innovative technologies to integrate anomaly detection and failure prognosis algorithms into automated fault mitigation strategies for advanced aircraft controls. Traditional reactive fault tolerant control approaches fail to provide optimal fault mitigation over a long period of time to guarantee the integrity of the platform for the mission duration. We will create a generic simulation environment to demonstrate fault detection and progression at the component level, using electromechanical actuators as a testbench. The proposed Anomaly Detection/Mitigation system accepts sensor inputs, extracts features from raw data and employs an anomaly detection module to determine the presence of an anomaly with performance guarantees; a prognostic routine, built on Bayesian estimation (particle filtering) techniques to estimate the remaining useful life of the component; finally, a mitigation strategy trades off between performance and control authority to extend the life of the failing component until the mission is completed. This innovative prognostics-enhanced approach to fault mitigation uses Model Predictive Control techniques running in real time. Core algorithms will be implemented on embedded systems and used in hardware-in-the-loop demonstrations.

The integration of prognostics and adaptive reconfigurable control technologies within the proposed framework is unique and represents a potentially significant advancement for air/space transportation systems. The potential commercial use of the proposed technologies is broad. Examples of key customers that could benefit through use of the developed technologies include: unmanned combat air vehicles, JSF, future combat systems, commercial airlines, land and marine propulsion systems, industrial actuation systems, and robotic applications.

The need for automated fault diagnosis and anomaly mitigation technologies is evident in several new NASA programs focused on autonomous system operation. A potentially significant outcome of this program is to provide critical vehicle subsystems with the potential to become more reliable, operationally available and economically maintained through the use of the proactive anomaly detection and mitigation strategies. The real-time automated anomaly detection and fault mitigation technologies will be directly applicable to NASA's IVHM applications, Crew Exploration Vehicle, Reusable Launch Vehicles, Unmanned Air Vehicles and future generation general aviation platforms.

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