IVHM Solutions Using Commercially-available Aircraft Condition Monitoring Systems

Abstract

Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) aircraft condition monitoring system (ACMS) hardware supports critical health management functionality; real-time event forwarding or recording of any parametric/discrete data can be performed using the digital flight data acquisition unit (DFDAU). The ubiquitous DFDAU is the predominant fielded hardware supporting this important functionality -every 737, 757 and 767 airplane must have the unit installed and the same DFDAU can be used on any of the three aircraft (derivative implementations are on other airplane models). A predominant application of integrated vehicle health management (IVHM) is DFDAU-based flight operation quality assurance (FOQA) and/or engine condition monitoring (ECM) programs, and leveraging this on-going maintenance frame recording and/or Data Link type reporting can lead to dramatically improved IVHM operations. Critical functionality supports ACMS updates or continual maturation prior to a following vehicle mission, and associated Boeing On-Line Diagnostic Reporting (BOLDRtrade) IVHM data bus optimization methods are discussed. All of the aforementioned DFDAU features and future enhancements such as the import of code for sophisticated reasoning are planned for Boeing IVHM Lab prototyping.