Mission reliability improvement by marginal checking

Westinghouse ILSD is nearing completion of an investigation sponsored by the Rome Air Development Center to determine the operational feasibility of detecting incipient electronic system failures. Incipient-failure detection is called marginal checking. Laboratory experiments and accelerated life testing of selected subsystems/components were performed to identify and quantify changes in critical parameters that indicate incipient failure. Practical aspects of marginal checking concerning on-equipment and off-equipment implementation, as well as cost effectiveness, were considered. Results of this investigation indicate that operational detection of incipient failures appears to be feasible for certain classes of critical subsystems and components