A distributed autonomic logistics system with parallel-computing diagnostic algorithm for aircrafts

The autonomic logistic system (ALS), first used by the U.S. military JSF, is a new conceptional system which supports prognostic and health management system of aircrafts, including such as real-time failure monitoring, remaining useful life prediction and maintenance decisions-making. However, the development of ALS faces some challenges. Firstly, current ALS is mainly based on client/server architecture, which is very complex in a large-scale aircraft control center and software is required to be reconfigured for every accessed node, which will increase the cost and decrease the expandability of deployment for large scale aircraft control centers. Secondly, interpretation of telemetry parameters from the aircraft is a tough task considering various real-time flight conditions, including instructions from controllers, work statements of single machines or machine groups, and intrinsic physical meaning of telemetry parameters. It is troublesome to meet the expectation of full representing the relationship between faults and tests without a standard model. Finally, typical diagnostic algorithms based on dependency matrix are inefficient, especially the temporal waste when dealing with thousands of test points and fault modes, for the reason that the time complexity will increase exponentially as dependency matrix expansion. Under this situation, this paper proposed a distributed ALS under complex operating conditions, which has the following contributions 1) introducing a distributed system based on browser/server architecture, which is divided overall system into primary control system and diagnostic and health assessment platform; 2) designing a novel interface for modelling the interpretation rules of telemetry parameters and the relationship between faults and tests in consideration of multiple elements of aircraft conditions; 3) proposing a promoted diagnostic algorithm under parallel computing in order to decrease the computing time complexity. what's more, this paper develops a construction with 3D viewer of aircraft for user to locate fault points and presents repairment instructions for maintenance personnels based on Interactive Electronic Technical Manual, which supports both online and offline. A practice in a certain aircraft demonstrated the efficiency of improved diagnostic algorithm and proposed ALS.