Fault detection, diagnostics, and prognostics: software agent solutions

Fault diagnosis and prognosis are important tools for the reliability, availability and survivability of navy all-electric ships. Extending the fault detection and diagnosis into predictive maintenance increases the value of this technology. The traditional diagnosis can be viewed as a single diagnostic agent having a model of the whole system to be diagnosed. This becomes inadequate when the system becomes large and distributed as on the electric ships. For such systems, the software multi-agents may offer a solution. This paper first presents a brief review on the traditional fault diagnosis method with an emphasis on its application to electric motors as important components on the all-electric ship. The software agent technology is then introduced. The discussion is made about how this technology supports the drastic manning reduction requirements for the future navy ships. Examples are given on the existing naval applications of diagnostic and prognostic software agents.