Research on Estimation of Equivalent Working Time for Armored Vehicle Engine Based on Degradation Data

The working time of combat equipment’s engine, such as the diesel engine of armored vehicle, reflects its technical condition to a great degree. However, the identical use time under different external usage environments may reflect different technical conditions of equipment. But the residual life can be indirectly estimated more accurately by calculating equipment’s equivalent use time. Empirically speaking, the same values of degradation parameters usually reflect the same technical conditions of the equipment when it even worked under different external environments. The service life of the same type of equipment under the same usage environments is similar. In this paper, the determination principle and measurement method of the technical parameters is put forward firstly. Then, the neural network’s advantages in prediction field are put forward and the method of regression prediction with neural network is chosen to estimate the equivalent working time of diesel engine of armored vehicle. The standard external usage environments are specified so as to change the ordinary working time into its equivalent. Taking a certain type of armored equipment diesel engine as an example, the prediction model is built based on several degradation parameters. Then the model is tested and verified by actual usage data. The calculation results indicate that the estimation method is scientific and practical. Two problems are finally proposed to discuss for further improvement.