Prognostics Enhancemend Fault-Tolerant Control with an Application to a Hovercraft

Fault-Tolerant Control (FTC) is an emerging area of engineering and scientific research that integrates prognostics, health management concepts and intelligent control. Impact Technologies and the Georgia Institute of Technology, propose to build off of a strong foundation in fault-tolerant control (FTC) research performed with NASA in past years to mature the applicability of this technology and push the envelope on the capability and breadth of the technology itself. We are introducing for this purpose two novel concepts to expand the scope of fault tolerance and improve the safety and availability of such critical assets. Building upon the successes of Phase I, we will develop and apply to the hovercraft (a targeted testbed) a reconfigurable control strategy that relies on current prognostic information to maintain the platform's stable operation and complete its mission successfully. The second innovation to be introduced refers to a challenging problem encountered in complex systems such as aircraft platforms: A multitude of critical system components can not be monitored directly due to a lack of appropriate sensing modalities. We will introduce a Model Based Reasoning approach and frequency demodulation tools to resolve the ambiguity and "unmask" those fault variables that can not be observed directly.

The potential benefits from the successful completion of this program are enormous and will significantly impact the way critical aerospace and other systems are designed and operated. Examples of key customers that could benefit through use of the developed technologies include: unmanned air vehicles, JSF, future combat systems, commercial airlines, land and marine propulsion systems, industrial actuation systems, and robotic applications. Particularly, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Rolls-Royce have specific requirements on health management performance for which the fault tolerant technologies can provide value. Also, the prognostics-enhanced hovercraft control will be of great interest to OEMs. Impact has existing contracts with all these potential customers and has an excellent commercialization record.

The development of the proposed proactive fault-tolerant control (FTC) system will directly contribute to NASA's IVHM and IRAC efforts. The proposed technologies are generic in nature and are also applicable to Crew Exploration Vehicle, Reusable Launch Vehicles, aircraft, Unmanned Air Vehicles and future generation general aviation platforms, leading to benefits in the form of improved reliability, maintainability, and survivability of safety-critical aerospace systems. The long-term implications of a successful completion of this program are significant: We will provide a bridge between PHM/IVHM technologies and advanced controls for aircraft systems. A lot of NASA's NextGen and current activities can take immediate advantage of these technologies. In short term, the hovercraft modeling and adaptive control algorithms to be developed in this program can be directly transitioned to some ongoing research work at the Prognostics Center of Excellence of NASA Ames and other centers. The adaptable nature of the control modules will allow it to act as a design and development tool for a wide variety of NASA applications including complementing Stennis Space Center's ISHM system.

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