Condition-based monitoring of an electro-hydraulic system using open software architectures

A Boeing-led industry consortium has developed open software standards for the condition-based monitoring of complex systems (http://www.osacbm.org). The software standards provide a layered approach to maintenance (the layers are data acquisition, data manipulation, condition-monitoring, health assessment, prognostics, decision support and user display) in a distributed computing environment. This paper describes an implementation of the standard - its application to the condition-based monitoring of an electro-hydraulic system (EHS). The EHS comprises a brushless DC motor driving a hydraulic pump that supplies flow against a pressure-head. The set-up is under computer control $an electronic drive regulates the DC power used by the EHS. Various fault modes on the EHS are exercised and the effectiveness of the standard in acquiring data from sensors, processing the signals to deduce the occurrence of anomalies; and presenting the information conveniently, is demonstrated.