Title :
A test station health monitoring system [military aircraft]
Author :
Fitzgibbon, Kevin T. ; Kirkland, Larry V. ; Steadman, Bryan ; Pombo, Tony
Author_Institution :
Total Quality Syst. Inc., South Ogden, UT, USA
Abstract :
This paper presents a process to monitor test station health using the Weibull method and statistical patterns. The methodology is currently being applied to the F-16 automated test equipment (ATE) at the Ogden, Utah Air Logistic Center (OO-ALC) maintenance depot. An automated stream of test data collected from ATEs is used to process test results and to identify improvements necessary to increase the failure forecast accuracy. The paper discusses solutions to identify causes of ´re-test OK´ (RTOK) due to discrepancies between software testing procedures in the line and shop repairable units. The process includes a decision support system that uses artificial intelligence methods, such as expert system and neural networks, and a knowledge database to improve the troubleshooting capability. The paper also discusses a prototype development that collects malfunction codes (MFL) originated by the aircraft bus monitoring system. The MFL information is correlated with test results to detect RTOK causes.
Keywords :
aerospace expert systems; aircraft testing; automatic test equipment; computerised monitoring; condition monitoring; decision support systems; failure analysis; fault diagnosis; maintenance engineering; military aircraft; military computing; military equipment; neural nets; ATE; F-16 automated test equipment; F-16 combat aircraft; MFL information correlation; Weibull method; aircraft bus monitoring system; artificial intelligence methods; automated test data stream; decision support system; expert system; failure forecast accuracy; knowledge database; maintenance; malfunction codes; neural networks; prototype development; re-test OK causes; shop repairable units; software testing procedures; statistical patterns; test station health monitoring system; troubleshooting capability; Artificial intelligence; Automatic testing; Decision support systems; Logistics; Magnetic flux leakage; Military aircraft; Monitoring; Software testing; System testing; Test equipment;
Conference_Titel :
Aerospace Conference Proceedings, 2002. IEEE
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-7231-X
DOI :
10.1109/AERO.2002.1036157
