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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 343 records · Page 19

Synchrophasor Measurements-based Events Detection Using Deep Learning

Deep learning algorithms have been developed for phasor measurement units (PMUs) analysis aiming at providing grid operators to observe and react to significant real-time changes in the grid associated with multiple factors (e.g., power generation and load variations, different type of faults, and equipment mailfunction), or for offline post-event system diagnostics. In this study, a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)-based deep neural network (DNN) is adopted and evaluated to identify the most appropriate model configurations for event detection and longer-term anomalous pattern extraction. The proposed DNN model shows the potential on long-term predictions with the ability to capture nonlinear and nonstationary mixture complex patterns in PMU datasets. Real-world PMU in the WECC system were used for model development and validation.

deep learning↗

Health Management Applications for International Space Station

Traditional mission and vehicle management involves teams of highly trained specialists monitoring vehicle status and crew activities, responding rapidly to any anomalies encountered during operations. These teams work from the Mission Control Center and have access to engineering support teams with specialized expertise in International Space Station (ISS) subsystems. Integrated System Health Management (ISHM) applications can significantly augment these capabilities by providing enhanced monitoring, prognostic and diagnostic tools for critical decision support and mission management. The Intelligent Systems Division of NASA Ames Research Center is developing many prototype applications using model-based reasoning, data mining and simulation, working with Mission Control through the ISHM Testbed and Prototypes Project. This paper will briefly describe information technology that supports current mission management practice, and will extend this to a vision for future mission control workflow incorporating new ISHM applications. It will describe ISHM applications currently under development at NASA and will define technical approaches for implementing our vision of future human exploration mission management incorporating artificial intelligence and distributed web service architectures using specific examples. Several prototypes are under development, each highlighting a different computational approach. The ISStrider application allows in-depth analysis of Caution and Warning (C&W) events by correlating real-time telemetry with the logical fault trees used to define off-nominal events. The application uses live telemetry data and the Livingstone diagnostic inference engine to display the specific parameters and fault trees that generated the C&W event, allowing a flight controller to identify the root cause of the event from thousands of possibilities by simply navigating animated fault tree models on their workstation. SimStation models the functional power flow for the ISS Electrical Power System and can predict power balance for nominal and off-nominal conditions. SimStation uses realtime telemetry data to keep detailed computational physics models synchronized with actual ISS power system state. In the event of failure, the application can then rapidly diagnose root cause, predict future resource levels and even correlate technical documents relevant to the specific failure. These advanced computational models will allow better insight and more precise control of ISS subsystems, increasing safety margins by speeding up anomaly resolution and reducing,engineering team effort and cost. This technology will make operating ISS more efficient and is directly applicable to next-generation exploration missions and Crew Exploration Vehicles.

Alena, Richard↗

A Novel UAV Electric Propulsion Testbed for Diagnostics and Prognostics

This paper presents a novel hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testbed for systems level diagnostics and prognostics of an electric propulsion system used in UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicle). Referencing the all electric, Edge 540T aircraft used in science and research by NASA Langley Flight Research Center, the HIL testbed includes an identical propulsion system, consisting of motors, speed controllers and batteries. Isolated under a controlled laboratory environment, the propulsion system has been instrumented for advanced diagnostics and prognostics. To produce flight like loading on the system a slave motor is coupled to the motor under test (MUT) and provides variable mechanical resistance, and the capability of introducing nondestructive mechanical wear-like frictional loads on the system. This testbed enables the verification of mathematical models of each component of the propulsion system, the repeatable generation of flight-like loads on the system for fault analysis, test-to-failure scenarios, and the development of advanced system level diagnostics and prognostics methods. The capabilities of the testbed are extended through the integration of a LabVIEW-based client for the Live Virtual Constructive Distributed Environment (LVCDC) Gateway which enables both the publishing of generated data for remotely located observers and prognosers and the synchronization the testbed propulsion system with vehicles in the air. The developed HIL testbed gives researchers easy access to a scientifically relevant portion of the aircraft without the overhead and dangers encountered during actual flight.

Gorospe, George E., Jr.↗

Dynamic Anomaly Response and Integrated Analysis (DARIA): A Fault Investigation Toolset Supporting Earth-Independent Operations in Future Crewed Mars Missions

NASA's Moon to Mars Objectives outline a strategic vision for human spaceflight culminating in crewed missions to Mars. A critical component of this objective is the development of systems that are capable of being Earth-Independent Operated (EIO). A key aspect of EIO is the ability to rapidly detect, diagnose, and respond to anomalies in crew-supporting habitat and connected systems. To address this, the Dynamic Anomaly Response and Integrated Analysis (DARIA) architecture has been developed. DARIA incorporates a network of compact, wireless sensing devices called the System for Telemetry Amalgamation of Multimodal PrognosticS (STAMPS) for increased state awareness of EIO habitats. Able to perform on-the-fly data acquisition, STAMPS are connected to integrated anomaly data dashboards for crew visualization. DARIA is designed to seamlessly integrate into various off-world environments, including the International Space Station, Lunar Gateway, Artemis Base Camp, and future Mars habitats. By leveraging Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware, the NASA Internet of Things (NASA IoT) framework, and EIO fault detection methods, DARIA provides a cost-effective and adaptable solution for anomaly detection and response in EIO habitats.

Diagnostics↗

An intelligent tutoring system for space shuttle diagnosis

An Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) transcends conventional computer-based instruction. An ITS is capable of monitoring and understanding student performance thereby providing feedback, explanation, and remediation. This is accomplished by including models of the student, the instructor, and the expert technician or operator in the domain of interest. The space shuttle fuel cell is the technical domain for the project described below. One system, Microcomputer Intelligence for Technical Training (MITT), demonstrates that ITS's can be developed and delivered, with a reasonable amount of effort and in a short period of time, on a microcomputer. The MITT system capitalizes on the diagnostic training approach called Framework for Aiding the Understanding of Logical Troubleshooting (FAULT) (Johnson, 1987). The system's embedded procedural expert was developed with NASA's C-Language Integrated Production (CLIP) expert system shell (Cubert, 1987).

Johnson, William B.↗

Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) and Maintenance and Diagnostic System (MDS): A maintenance and diagnostic system for Space Station Freedom

The Maintenance and Diagnostic System (MDS) that is being developed at Honeywell to enhance the Fault Detection Isolation and Recovery system (FDIR) for the Attitude Determination and Control System on Space Station Freedom is described. The MDS demonstrates ways that AI-based techniques can be used to improve the maintainability and safety of the Station by helping to resolve fault anomalies that cannot be fully determined by built-in-test, by providing predictive maintenance capabilities, and by providing expert maintenance assistance. The MDS will address the problems associated with reasoning about dynamic, continuous information versus only about static data, the concerns of porting software based on AI techniques to embedded targets, and the difficulties associated with real-time response. An initial prototype was built of the MDS. The prototype executes on Sun and IBM PS/2 hardware and is implemented in the Common Lisp; further work will evaluate its functionality and develop mechanisms to port the code to Ada.

Toms, David↗

Object-oriented fault tree models applied to system diagnosis

When a diagnosis system is used in a dynamic environment, such as the distributed computer system planned for use on Space Station Freedom, it must execute quickly and its knowledge base must be easily updated. Representing system knowledge as object-oriented augmented fault trees provides both features. The diagnosis system described here is based on the failure cause identification process of the diagnostic system described by Narayanan and Viswanadham. Their system has been enhanced in this implementation by replacing the knowledge base of if-then rules with an object-oriented fault tree representation. This allows the system to perform its task much faster and facilitates dynamic updating of the knowledge base in a changing diagnosis environment. Accessing the information contained in the objects is more efficient than performing a lookup operation on an indexed rule base. Additionally, the object-oriented fault trees can be easily updated to represent current system status. This paper describes the fault tree representation, the diagnosis algorithm extensions, and an example application of this system. Comparisons are made between the object-oriented fault tree knowledge structure solution and one implementation of a rule-based solution. Plans for future work on this system are also discussed.

Iverson, David L.↗

Periodic Application of Concurrent Error Detection in Processor Array Architectures

Processor arrays can provide an attractive architecture for some applications. Featuring modularity, regular interconnection and high parallelism, such arrays are well-suited for VLSI/WSI implementations, and applications with high computational requirements, such as real-time signal processing. Preserving the integrity of results can be of paramount importance for certain applications. In these cases, fault tolerance should be used to ensure reliable delivery of a system's service. One aspect of fault tolerance is the detection of errors caused by faults. Concurrent error detection (CED) techniques offer the advantage that transient and intermittent faults may be detected with greater probability than with off-line diagnostic tests. Applying time-redundant CED techniques can reduce hardware redundancy costs. However, most time-redundant CED techniques degrade a system's performance.

Chen, Paul Peichuan↗

A Review of Transmission Diagnostics Research at NASA Lewis Research Center

This paper presents a summary of the transmission diagnostics research work conducted at NASA Lewis Research Center over the last four years. In 1990, the Transmission Health and Usage Monitoring Research Team at NASA Lewis conducted a survey to determine the critical needs of the diagnostics community. Survey results indicated that experimental verification of gear and bearing fault detection methods, improved fault detection in planetary systems, and damage magnitude assessment and prognostics research were all critical to a highly reliable health and usage monitoring system. In response to this, a variety of transmission fault detection methods were applied to experimentally obtained fatigue data. Failure modes of the fatigue data include a variety of gear pitting failures, tooth wear, tooth fracture, and bearing spalling failures. Overall results indicate that, of the gear fault detection techniques, no one method can successfully detect all possible failure modes. The more successful methods need to be integrated into a single more reliable detection technique. A recently developed method, NA4, in addition to being one of the more successful gear fault detection methods, was also found to exhibit damage magnitude estimation capabilities.

Zakajsek, James J.↗

Space Environments Testbed

The Space Environments Testbed (SET) is a flight controller data system for the Common Carrier Assembly. The SET-1 flight software provides the command, telemetry, and experiment control to ground operators for the SET-1 mission. Modes of operation (see dia gram) include: a) Boot Mode that is initiated at application of power to the processor card, and runs memory diagnostics. It may be entered via ground command or autonomously based upon fault detection. b) Maintenance Mode that allows for limited carrier health monitoring, including power telemetry monitoring on a non-interference basis. c) Safe Mode is a predefined, minimum power safehold configuration with power to experiments removed and carrier functionality minimized. It is used to troubleshoot problems that occur during flight. d) Operations Mode is used for normal experiment carrier operations. It may be entered only via ground command from Safe Mode.

Leucht, David K.↗

Benchmarking Diagnostic Algorithms on an Electrical Power System Testbed

Diagnostic algorithms (DAs) are key to enabling automated health management. These algorithms are designed to detect and isolate anomalies of either a component or the whole system based on observations received from sensors. In recent years a wide range of algorithms, both model-based and data-driven, have been developed to increase autonomy and improve system reliability and affordability. However, the lack of support to perform systematic benchmarking of these algorithms continues to create barriers for effective development and deployment of diagnostic technologies. In this paper, we present our efforts to benchmark a set of DAs on a common platform using a framework that was developed to evaluate and compare various performance metrics for diagnostic technologies. The diagnosed system is an electrical power system, namely the Advanced Diagnostics and Prognostics Testbed (ADAPT) developed and located at the NASA Ames Research Center. The paper presents the fundamentals of the benchmarking framework, the ADAPT system, description of faults and data sets, the metrics used for evaluation, and an in-depth analysis of benchmarking results obtained from testing ten diagnostic algorithms on the ADAPT electrical power system testbed.

Kurtoglu, Tolga↗

A Causal Approach to Integrate Component Health Data into System Reliability Models

Two of the challenges of current plant reliability approaches are the ability to integrate plant health data, and to support decision making. Condition based data and diagnostic/prognostic information are in fact not considered into plant reliability models to inform system engineers on the most critical components. Currently, the propagation of quantitative health data from the component to the system level is a challenge given the diverse nature/structure of the data. On the other hand, plant reliability methods (which are typically based on fault-trees or reliability block diagrams) can effectively propagate data from the component to the system level, but values of failure rates or failure probabilities are an approximated integral representation of the past industry-wide operational experience, and it neglects the present component health status (e.g., diagnostic and condition-based data) and health projection (when available from prognostic data). Our first claim is that system reliability models should propagate health information from the component to the system/plant level in order to provide a quantitative snapshot of system/plant health and identify the most critical components. Our second claim is that component health should be informed solely by that specific component current and historical performance data and should not be an approximated integral representation of the past industry-wide operational experience. This paper is directly supporting these two claims by proposing a different approach to perform reliability modeling which relies on available component diagnostic, prognostic and condition-based data to measure component health, and it propagates this information through fault tree models. The propagation of health data from the component to the system level is performed not in terms of probability, but in terms of margins where margin is defined as the “distance” between the present actual status and an undesired event (e.g., failure or unacceptable performance). Through a cause-effect lens, while classical reliability models target the effect associated to a component performance, a margin-based approach focuses on the cause of an undesired component performance (i.e., component health). Hence, thinking of reliability in terms of margins implies decision making based on causal reasoning. We will show how fault tree models can be solved using a margin language and how this process can effectively assist system engineers to identify the most critical components.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A Generic Modeling Process to Support Functional Fault Model Development

Functional fault models (FFMs) are qualitative representations of a system's failure space that are used to provide a diagnostic of the modeled system. An FFM simulates the failure effect propagation paths within a system between failure modes and observation points. These models contain a significant amount of information about the system including the design, operation and off nominal behavior. The development and verification of the models can be costly in both time and resources. In addition, models depicting similar components can be distinct, both in appearance and function, when created individually, because there are numerous ways of representing the failure space within each component. Generic application of FFMs has the advantages of software code reuse: reduction of time and resources in both development and verification, and a standard set of component models from which future system models can be generated with common appearance and diagnostic performance. This paper outlines the motivation to develop a generic modeling process for FFMs at the component level and the effort to implement that process through modeling conventions and a software tool. The implementation of this generic modeling process within a fault isolation demonstration for NASA's Advanced Ground System Maintenance (AGSM) Integrated Health Management (IHM) project is presented and the impact discussed.

Design Analysis↗

Fiber Optic Tactical Local Network (FOTLAN)

A 100 Mbit/s FDDI (fiber distributed data interface) network interface unit is described that supports real-time data, voice and video. Its high-speed interrupt-driven hardware architecture efficiently manages stream and packet data transfer to the FDDI network. Other enhancements include modular single-mode laser-diode fiber optic links to maximize node spacing, optic bypass switches for increased fault tolerance, and a hardware performance monitor to gather real-time network diagnostics.

Bergman, L. A.↗

The use of programmable logic controllers (PLC) for rocket engine component testing

Application of PLCs to the rocket engine component testing at a new Stennis Space Center Component Test Facility is suggested as an alternative to dedicated specialized computers. The PLC systems are characterized by rugged design, intuitive software, fault tolerance, flexibility, multiple end device options, networking capability, and built-in diagnostics. A distributed PLC-based system is projected to be used for testing LH2/LOx turbopumps required for the ALS/NLS rocket engines.

Nail, William↗

A high performance FDDI NIU for streaming voice, video, and data

A 100-Mbit/s FDDI network interface unit (NIU) is described that supports real-time data, voice and video. Its high-speed interrupt-driven hardware architecture efficiently manages stream and packet data transfers to the FDDI network. Other enhancements include modular single-mode laser-dioce fiber optic links to maximize node spacing, optic bypass switches for increased fault tolerance, and a hardware performance monitor to gather real-time network diagnostics.

Bergman, L. A.↗

Design of the Protocol Processor for the ROBUS-2 Communication System

The ROBUS-2 Protocol Processor (RPP) is a custom-designed hardware component implementing the functionality of the ROBUS-2 fault-tolerant communication system. The Reliable Optical Bus (ROBUS) is the core communication system of the Scalable Processor-Independent Design for Enhanced Reliability (SPIDER), a general-purpose fault tolerant integrated modular architecture currently under development at NASA Langley Research Center. ROBUS is a time-division multiple access (TDMA) broadcast communication system with medium access control by means of time-indexed communication schedule. ROBUS-2 is a developmental version of the ROBUS providing guaranteed fault-tolerant services to the attached processing elements (PEs), in the presence of a bounded number of faults. These services include message broadcast (Byzantine Agreement), dynamic communication schedule update, time reference (clock synchronization), and distributed diagnosis (group membership). ROBUS also features fault-tolerant startup and restart capabilities. ROBUS-2 tolerates internal as well as PE faults, and incorporates a dynamic self-reconfiguration capability driven by the internal diagnostic system. ROBUS consists of RPPs connected to each other by a lower-level physical communication network. The RPP has a pipelined architecture and the design is parameterized in the behavioral and structural domains. The design of the RPP enables the bus to achieve a PE-message throughput that approaches the available bandwidth at the physical layer.

Torres-Pomales, Wilfredo↗