A Generic Prognostic Methodology Using Damage Trajectory Models

In modern industries, there is intense pressure to continuously reduce costly, unscheduled maintenance of complex systems. To obtain high availability with reduced life cycle total ownership costs, classical maintenance policies are not optimal. Indeed, these polices do not allow us to perform maintenance only when it is necessary because they are not able to forecast system damage states in the future. To predict precisely the future system damage state, it is necessary to take into account how and where the system will be used. To build incremental damage models, this paper presents a generic methodology and formalism based on the system decomposition in three levels: environment, mission, and process. Predictions are performed via a sequence of known mission parameters, and environmental conditions. This allows for mission and maintenance planning by taking into account the predicted system damages over time.