• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.17 no.11
• /
• pp.1095-1100
• /
• 2011

In this paper, PHM (Prognostics and Health Management) techniques are briefly outlined. Prognostics, being a central step within the PHM, is explained in more detail, stating that there are three approaches - experience based, data-driven and model based approaches. Representative articles in the field of prognostics are also given in terms of the type of faults. Model based method is illustrated by introducing a case study that was conducted to the crack growth of the gear plate in UH-60A helicopter. The paper also addresses the comparison of the OBM (Overall Bayesian Method), which was developed by the authors with the PF (Particle Filtering) method, which draws great attention recently in prognostics, through the study on a simple crack growth problem. Their performances are examined by evaluating the metrics introduced by PHM society.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.143-151
• /
• 2012

Predicting the future condition of machine and assessing the remaining useful life are the center of prognostics. This paper contributes a new prognostic method based on grey model and survival probability. The first step of the method is building a normal condition model then determining the error indicator. In the second step, the survival probability value is obtained based on the error indicator. Finally, grey model coupled with one-step-ahead forecasting technique are employed in the last step. This work has developed a modified grey model in order to improve the accuracy of prediction. For evaluating the proposed method, real trending data of low methane compressor acquired from condition monitoring routine were employed.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.355-362
• /
• 2012

Remaining useful life(RUL) prediction of a system is important in the prognostics field since it is directly linked with safety and maintenance scheduling. In the physics-based prognostics, accurately estimated model parameters can predict the remaining useful life exactly. It, however, is not a simple task to estimate the model parameters because most real system have multivariate model parameters, also they are correlated each other. This paper presents representative methods to estimate model parameters in the physics-based prognostics and discusses the difference between three methods; the particle filter method(PF), the overall Bayesian method(OBM), and the sequential Bayesian method(SBM). The three methods are based on the same theoretical background, the Bayesian estimation technique, but the methods are distinguished from each other in the sampling methods or uncertainty analysis process. Therefore, a simple physical model as an easy task and the Paris model for crack growth problem are used to discuss the difference between the three methods, and the performance of each method evaluated by using established prognostics metrics is compared.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.50 no.8
• /
• pp.1314-1323
• /
• 2018

For nuclear power plants (NPPs) to have long lifetimes, ageing is a major issue. Currently, ageing management for NPP systems is based on correlations built from generic experimental data. However, each system has its own characteristics, operational history, and environment. To account for this, it is possible to resort to prognostics that predicts the future state and time to failure (TTF) of the target system by updating the generic correlation with specific information of the target system. In this paper, we present an application of particle filtering for the prediction of degradation in steam generator tubes. With a case study, we also show how the prediction results vary depending on the uncertainty of the measurement data.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.49 no.5
• /
• pp.914-919
• /
• 2017

While industry understands the importance of keeping equipment operational and well maintained, the importance of tracking maintenance information in reliability models is often overlooked. Prognostic models can be used to predict the failure times of critical equipment, but more often than not, these models assume that all maintenance actions are the same or do not consider maintenance at all. This study investigates the influence of integrating maintenance information on prognostic model prediction accuracy. By incorporating maintenance information to develop maintenance-dependent prognostic models, prediction accuracy was improved by more than 40% compared with traditional maintenance-independent models. This study acts as a proof of concept, showing the importance of utilizing maintenance information in modern prognostics for industrial equipment.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.50 no.1
• /
• pp.88-96
• /
• 2018

Concerns over reliability assessments of the main components in nuclear power plants (NPPs) related to aging and continuous operation have increased. The conventional reliability assessment for main components uses experimental correlations under general conditions. Most NPPs have been operating in Korea for a long time, and it is predictable that NPPs operating for the same number of years would show varying extent of aging and degradation. The conventional reliability assessment does not adequately reflect the characteristics of an individual plant. Therefore, the reliability of individual components and an individual plant was estimated according to operating data and conditions. It is essential to reflect aging as a characteristic of individual NPPs, and this is performed through prognostics. To handle this difficulty, in this paper, the general path model/Bayes, a data-based prognostic method, was used to update the reliability estimated from the generic database. As a case study, the authors consider the aging for steam generator tubes in NPPs and demonstrate the suggested methodology with data obtained from the probabilistic algorithm for the steam generator tube assessment program.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
• /
• v.42 no.4
• /
• pp.939-949
• /
• 2017

Prognostics and health management(PHM) is actively utilized by industry as an essential technology focusing on accurately monitoring the health state of a system and predicting the remaining useful life(RUL). An effective PHM is expected to reduce maintenance costs as well as improve safety of system by preventing failure in advance. With these advantages, PHM can be applied to the battery system which is a core element to provide electricity for devices with mobility, since battery faults could lead to operational downtime, performance degradation, and even catastrophic loss of human life by unexpected explosion due to non-linear characteristics of battery. In this paper we mainly review a recent progress on various models for predicting RUL of battery with high accuracy satisfying the given confidence interval level. Moreover, performance evaluation metrics for battery prognostics are presented in detail to show the strength of these metrics compared to the traditional ones used in the existing forecasting applications.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.46 no.6
• /
• pp.773-782
• /
• 2014

The general path model (GPM) is one approach for performing degradation-based, or Type III, prognostics. The GPM fits a parametric function to the collected observations of a prognostic parameter and extrapolates the fit to a failure threshold. This approach has been successfully applied to a variety of systems when a sufficient number of prognostic parameter observations are available. However, the parametric fit can suffer significantly when few data are available or the data are very noisy. In these instances, it is beneficial to include additional information to influence the fit to conform to a prior belief about the evolution of system degradation. Bayesian statistical approaches have been proposed to include prior information in the form of distributions of expected model parameters. This requires a number of run-to-failure cases with tracked prognostic parameters; these data may not be readily available for many systems. Reliability information and stressor-based (Type I and Type II, respectively) prognostic estimates can provide the necessary prior belief for the GPM. This article presents the Bayesian updating framework to include prior information in the GPM and compares the efficacy of including different information sources on two data sets.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.339-356
• /
• 2018

Although fuel cell systems have advantages in terms of electric efficiency and environmental impact compared with conventional power systems, fuel cell systems have not been deployed widely due to their low reliability and high price. In order to guarantee the lifetime of 10 years, which is the commercialization goal of Polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs), it is necessary to improve durability and reliability through optimized operation and maintenance technologies. Due to the complexity of components and their degradation phenomena, it's not easy to develop and apply the diagnose and prognostic methodologies for PEFCs. The purpose of the paper is to show the current state on PEFC prognostic technology for condition based maintenance. For the prognostic of PEFCs, the model driven method, the data-driven, and the hybrid method can be applied. The methods reviewed in this paper can contribute to the development of technologies to reduce the life cycle cost of fuel cells and increase the reliability through prognostics-based health management system.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
• /
• v.23 no.6
• /
• pp.641-649
• /
• 2010

Estimation of uncertain parameters is required in many engineering problems which involve probabilistic structural analysis as well as prognosis of existing structures. In this case, Bayesian framework is often employed, which is to represent the uncertainty of parameters in terms of probability distributions conditional on the provided data. The resulting form of distribution, however, is not amenable to the practical application due to its complex nature making the standard probability functions useless. In this study, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is proposed to overcome this difficulty, which is a modern computational technique for the efficient and straightforward estimation of parameters. Three case studies that implement the estimation are presented to illustrate the concept. The first one is an inverse estimation, in which the unknown input parameters are inversely estimated based on a finite number of measured response data. The next one is a metamodel uncertainty problem that arises when the original response function is approximated by a metamodel using a finite set of response values. The last one is a prognostics problem, in which the unknown parameters of the degradation model are estimated based on the monitored data.