A Failure Isolation Algorithm For Liquid Engine Health Management System

This paper presents a new approach for establishing a failure isolation algorithm as part of a liquid prolusion engine health management system (HMS) for a launch vehicle, called Failure Isolation Algorithm For Liquid Engine (FIAFLE). The paper also presents a refined definition of ambiguity, traditionally used by HMS for measuring failure isolation effectiveness. The paper presents the steps of FIAFLE and shows two illustrative examples with one illustrating the use of the failure isolation evaluation result to assist the best sensor suite selection during an early design phase of an HMS, and the other illustrating the failure isolation ability for assisting post-failure diagnosis. The usefulness and benefits of FIAFLE are discussed and some improvement possibilities of FIAFLE are pointed to assist further research, development and more effective applications of failure isolations in a health management system for reliability and safety enhancement.