CBM+ Research Environment - Facilitating Technology Development, Experimentation, and Maturation

Since its beginning in late 1990s, prognostics and health management (PHM), or condition based maintenance plus (CBM+), has not only spawned a vital research community, but has also become a requirement for complex systems, like air and space vehicles, to achieve the goals of condition base maintenance (CBM) and reliability centered maintenance (RCM). CBM+ extends the traditional capabilities of fault detection and isolation with the capabilities of prognostics and logistics. To enable these extended capabilities, a modern CBM+ system requires two essential components: 1) an on-board monitoring unit; and 2) an off-board (or ground-based) information system. The CBM+ research environment is an implementation of the off-board information system to facilitate CBM and RCM practices. Historically, aircraft propulsion systems (or engines) have led the way in deploying CBM+ capabilities, because of their criticality on flight safety and their significance in driving maintenance cost. By using the propulsion system as the target application, this paper describes the off-board information system being designed by the authors. It also presents some examples to demonstrate the concept of the CBM+ research environment.