CALCE PHM Lab has been awarded a NASA, U.S. project titled “Reliable Diagnostics and Prognostics for Critical Avionics Systems”. In this project, CALCE PHM Lab will develop and validate system and component (LRU) level diagnostic and prognostic methods for avionic systems.

This will include investigation of several potential mathematical techniques and/or the combination of these techniques to design diagnostic and prognostic algorithms. The investigation will establish an understanding of critical avionics systems, the nature of “soft” faults, and criteria for failure. Additionally the investigation will provide a platform for managing system level malfunctions cause by “soft” faults as well as provide a framework for addressing the system health state and differentiate between actual failures and false alarms.

Research aims to improve the accuracy of avionics fault detection capability, boost in-flight performance, reduce maintenance costs and improve overall aircraft reliability. Additionally this project will provide algorithms for offline data analysis to detect soft faults and find the patterns of soft faults in relation with other relevant system events.

Prognostic algorithms will be developed to track degradation and predict the remaining useful life for avionics systems. These algorithms will be validated against simulated and experimental data and the requirements will be tested, based on scenarios that emulate avionics type data.