Automated data acquisition for a Prognostics and Diagnostics Health Monitoring System

The military has mandated the need for continuous health monitoring to be implemented for prognostics and diagnostics (PD) applications at the mechanical and electronic level of fielded systems. The variety of military systems dictates the need for a highly flexible design that can be easily modified for different applications. Data acquisition is a core component of the PD process to get valuable information from the monitored system to a processing module for the execution of PD algorithms. This paper addresses the design architecture of a PD sensor module (PDSM) for a prognostics and diagnostics health monitoring system (PDHMS) that can be introduced for electronics PD in a wide range of military systems. The use of this PDSM prototype in provoked electronic fault testing (PEFT) on a specific military platform will also be discussed.