Physical-clone-based prognostics of mechanical structures

Due to the inherent uncertainties caused by the manufacturing process variation, future loading conditions and damage modeling, the lifetime of the mechanical structures or system used in filed condition substantially different from the result in laboratories. The physical clone, newly proposed term in this paper, is a slightly weak structure designed to produce failure earlier than target structures. So it undergoes identical loading as target structures do including non-measurable or unexpected physical phenomena. The time to failure of the physical clone can be tuned by devised method to secure proper prognostic distance for maintenance or golden-time to evacuation. In this paper, the physical-clone-based approach has been developed and demonstrated using 316L stainless steel under high cycle fatigue and compared with model-based approach.