IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, 2009

Prognostics-Based Product Qualification

Jie Gu
Michael Pecht
Prognostics Health Management Group
Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE)
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742

Abstract:

Qualification is the process of demonstrating that a product is capable of meeting or exceeding specified requirements. The specified requirements are expected to depend on the final product and its specific life cycle application conditions.

In this paper, a prognostics-based qualification is proposed, which is more efficient and cost effective than the traditional qualification process. The approach does not require a product to fail in the test, because in addition to detecting failure, the health of the product is monitored, including degraded health and intermittent product disruptions. The results are a significant decrease in qualification time and much improved understanding of the product’s reliability.

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