Annual Conference of the Prognostics and Health Management Society, 2009
Design of an Electrical Power System using a Functional
Failure and Flow State Logic Reasoning Methodology
David C. Jensen 1, Irem Y. Tumer 1, and Tolga Kurtoglu 2
1 School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, 97331, USA
2 Mission Critical Technologies, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field , CA, 94035, USA
Abstract:
Knowledge about failures and failure propagation
paths in early design can benefit Prognostics and
Health Management (PHM) system development
by identifying expected system failures, determining
adequate system monitoring, and improving
system reliability through hardware configurational
changes. Function-based failure analysis
provides a means for early system representation
that can provide meaningful results for failure
analysis. Function-based failure analysis methods
model failures propagating between components
based on shared energy, material, and signal
(EMS) flows. Limiting these connections to the
designed system representation limits the scope
of failure impact and propagation analysis. This
paper presents a method of defining and reasoning
on flow states for designed and potential EMS
flows and using this information to determine impact
and propagation behavior for failures based
on early design information. To demonstrate the
value of this approach, an electrical power system
design is developed and analyzed as a case study.
The initial results presented in this paper specifically
benefit the development of PHM by providing
simulated system behavior for a wide scope
of propagation paths and by identifying the impact
of failures with respect to system functions.