Overview

The Diagnostics and Prognostics (DnP) group investigates system health management technologies relevant to NASA missions.

Within diagnostics, we are focusing on developing model-based technology for detection and identification of discrete and continuous faults. We are also researching advances for Bayesian Belief Nets. Utilizing a large electric power distribution system that mimics one that one would find on an aircraft or spacecraft, we are benchmarking diagnostics performance with hardware-in-the-loop. Finally, we are investigating metrics for diagnostics that will aid in the benchmarking and generally in the comparison of different diagnostic algorithms.

Within prognostics, we are currently investigating damage detection and damage propagation mechanisms on select safety-critical actuators for transport-class aircraft, and damage propagation mechanisms for critical electrical and electronic components in avionic equipment. Beyond prognostics, we are investigating decision-making that takes prognostic information into consideration which will be manifested in advanced reconfiguration strategies. We are also in the process of extending a testbed that will allow the comparative analysis of different prognostic algorithms. In addition, we investigate prognostics metrics that will allow a proper comparison of different prognostic approaches. Lastly, data collected from aging processes will be made available to the research community in a public data repository.

The DnP group is the steward of NASA's Prognostics Center of Excellence whose mission it is to advance state-of-the-art technology development for remaining life estimation and related topics. Please check the web site of the PCoE