Physics-based integrated vehicle health management system for predicting the remaining useful life of an aircraft planetary gear transmission
International Journal of Structural Integrity
ISSN: 1757-9864
Article publication date: 14 August 2017
Abstract
Purpose
Integrated vehicle health management has been developed for several years in different industries, to be able to provide the required inputs to determine the optimal maintenance operations depending on the actual health status of the system. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the potential of a physics-based model (PbM) for prognostics with a real case study, based on the detection of incipient faults and estimate the remaining useful life of a planetary transmission of an aircraft system.
Design/methodology/approach
Most of the research in the area of health assessment algorithms has been focused on data-driven approaches that are not based on the knowledge of the physics of the system, while PbM approaches rely on the understanding of the system and the degradation mechanisms. A physics-based modelling approach to represent metal-metal contact and fatigue in the gears of the planetary transmission of an aircraft system is applied.
Findings
Both the failure mode caused by metal-metal contact as caused by fatigue in the gears is described. Furthermore, the real-time application that retrieves the results from the simulations to assess the health of the system is described. Finally the decision making that can be executed during flight in the aircraft is incorporated.
Originality/value
The paper proposes an innovative prognostics health management system that assesses two important failure modes of the planetary transmission that regulates the speed of the generators of an aircraft. The results from the models have been integrated in an application that emulates a real system in the aircraft and computes the remaining useful life in real time.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement n°605779 (project RepAIR). The text reflects the authors’ views. The European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. For further information see www.rep-air.eu/
Citation
Cubillo, A., Vermeulen, J., Rodriguez de la Peña, M., Collantes Casanova, I. and Perinpanayagam, S. (2017), "Physics-based integrated vehicle health management system for predicting the remaining useful life of an aircraft planetary gear transmission", International Journal of Structural Integrity, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 484-495. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSI-01-2016-0003
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited