Generalized Prognostic Algorithm Implementing Kalman Smoother

Eric Bechhoefer
President
GPMS Inc
Cornwall, VT, USA

Rune Schlanbusch
Senior Researcher
Teknova AS
Grimstad, Norway

ABSTRACT
The ability to prognosticate the future state of a mechanical component can greatly improve the ability of a
helicopter operator to manage their assets. Fundamentally, prognostics can change the logistics support of a
helicopter by: reducing spares, improving the likelihood of a deployment meeting its mission requirements, and
reducing unscheduled maintenance events. A successful prognosis is based on applying a fault model and usage
metrics (torque) to a diagnostic. This paper addresses a generalized fault and usage model through simplification of
Paris Law and the use of a Kalman Smoother. This state observer technique is a backward/forward filtering
technique that has no phase delay. This allows a generalized, zero tuning model that provides an improved
component health trend, and a better estimate of the current remaining useful life (RUL).

INTRODUCTION
Diagnostics of a rotating component is a maturing field.
Various studies by McFadden, Smith (Ref 1.), Zakrajsek et
al. (Ref 2.), Lewiskei et al. (Ref 3.), among others, have
disclosed a number of analysis techniques. These techniques
can be classified as synchronous analysis (for shaft and gear)
and non-synchronous analysis (for bearing). Synchronous
analysis is based on the Time Synchronous Average (TSA).
Non-synchronous analysis for bearings generally uses some
type of demodulation and enveloping, returning energy
associated with the bearing fault frequency.
For shaft/gear analysis, further analysis of the TSA is
performed. These other analysis can be a statistic of the time
domain waveform (e.g. TSA root mean square (RMS), TSA
Kurtosis, RMS of the TSA residual signal), statistics base on
time and frequency domain waveforms (e.g. Figure of Merit
0, in which the TSA Peak to Peak is divided by gear mesh
energies), or the frequency domain itself (shaft order 1
magnitude).

The original equipment manufacture (OEM) may have

set limits for some components (e.g. 1 inch per second on a
shaft), to define when maintenance should be performed.
However, most components have no formal limits. It is then
up to the operator, or health and usage monitoring system
(HUMS) vendor to define these thresholds. In Bechhoefer et
al. (Ref 4), the CIs where transformed into a health indicator
(HI) using whitening linear transform. The whitening
process is important because it ensures that the operational
probability of false alarm (PFA, i.e. the rate of false alarms
seen in the field data), is the same as the system design PFA.
The scale and offset of the transform was based on a
generalized function of distribution technique. This
transform constructs an HI such that:

Whether from synchronous or non-synchronous

analysis, these statistics are typically called condition
indicators (CIs). The CIs are then used for the diagnostics
of the component under analysis.

Presented at the AHS 71st Annual Forum, Virginia

Beach, Virginia, May 57, 2015. Copyright 2015 by the
American Helicopter Society International, Inc. All rights
reserved.

The probability of a nominal component

having and HI greater than 0.5 is less than 10-6,
i.e. PFA is 1 x 10-6.

When the HI is greater than 0.75 and less than

1.0, the component is in warning (plan on
scheduling maintenance), and

When the HI is greater than 1.0, continue

operations could result in collateral damage to
the gearbox or degradation in system
performance.

This is not a change to an existing maintenance

procedure, but a supplement. As this is an administrative
policy change (e.g. do maintenance/inspection when the HI
is 1), this can be used to estimate remaining useful life
(RUL). That is, the RUL is the estimated time from the
current HI value to when the HI reaches 1.0. This allows the
1

operator to better plan and manage maintenance on their

assets. This process has been implemented on over 80 wind
turbines with numerous successful finds (Ref 5.).
This paper reviews the process for developing CI for a
bearing example, then mapping the CI to an HI, and finally,
the RUL estimation algorithm.

FEATURE EXTRACTION AND CI

GENERATION
Vibration signatures for machinery faults tend to be
small relative to other vibration signatures. For example, in
the typical gearbox, the energy associated with gear mesh
and shaft vibrations will be orders of magnitude larger than a
fault feature. Spectral analysis or root mean squares (RMS)
of vibration are not powerful enough CIs to detect an early
fault, let alone provide information useful for prognostics.
Techniques to improve the signal to noise are needed to
remove frequencies associated with nominal components,
while preserving the fault signatures. The analysis
processing for the bearing analysis is outline in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Bearing CI Generation

Bearing Envelop Analysis
Bearing analysis is based on operating on the time
synchronous resampling (TSR, See Ref 6.). TSR is a signal
processing technique that corrects for changes in the shaft
rate of the component under analysis. It is not uncommon to
see a 1 or 2% change in shaft speed over the acquisition (for
the example case, 6 seconds of data at 100,000 samples per
second (sps)). Once the time domain data has been speed
corrected, bearing envelope analysis (BEA) is performed.

cos cos =

!
!

cos + + cos ( )

(1)

This is amplitude modulation of the bearing rate a with

the high frequency carrier signal (resonant frequency b).
This causes sidebands in the spectrum surrounding the
resonant frequency. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish
the exact frequency of the resonance. It is usually not known
a priori and cannot be determined easily. However,
demodulation techniques typically do not need to know the
exact frequency. The BEA multiplies the vibration signal by
a high frequency, complex signal centered at a hypothesized
resonant frequency (example, 22.5 KHz). This is then low
pass filtered to remove the high frequency image, decimated,
and the spectral power density is estimated by:
1
cos cos + = cos + + + cos +
2
cos
(2)
The bearing components have a number of vibration
modes, which will correspondingly generate resonance at
various frequencies throughout the spectrum. The selection
of the tone used to demodulate the bearing rate signal (e.g.
the window center frequency) should take into account two
issues. First, the gearbox spectrum contains a number of
high-energy tones from shaft and gear harmonics, which
would mask analysis at lower bearing frequencies. This
suggests using one of the higher bearing modes, where there
is less shaft/gear energy. Second, there are a number of
accelerometers with natural resonance at frequencies that are
similar to the bearing modes. Using a higher frequency
window close to the accelerometer resonance can amplify
the bearing fault signal, increasing the probability of fault
detection.
BEA should be performed at frequencies higher than the
shaft and gear mesh tones. This ensures that the
demodulated bearing tones are not masked by the other
rotating sources, such as shaft and gear mesh, which are
present at CPF, BPFO, BPFI and BFF frequencies. Typical
shaft order amplitudes of 0.1 Gs and gear mesh amplitudes
of 10s of Gs, are common. Damaged bearing amplitudes are
0.1 to 1 Gs.
For BEA, the bearing rates are calculated as:
cage pass Frequency (CPF):

BEA is based on demodulation of high frequency

resonance associated with bearing element impacts. For
rolling element bearings, when the rolling elements strike a
local fault on the inner or outer race, or a fault on a rolling
element strikes the inner or outer race, an impact is
produced. These impacts modulate a signal at the associated
bearing pass frequencies, such as: cage pass frequency
(CPF), ball pass frequency outer race (BPFO), ball pass
frequency inner race (BPFI), and ball fault frequency (BFF).
This periodic modulation also increases the envelop RMS.
Mathematically, the modulation is described as:

!
!

1 cos
!

(3)

ball pass frequency inner race (BPFI):

!"
!

1 + cos
!

ball pass frequency outer race (BPFO):

(4)

!"
!

1 cos ()

(5)

ball fault frequency (BFF):

!"
!

! !
!

cos ! ()

It was stated that a component is nominally healthy,

thus it is apparent that X(t) and Y(t) are independent, such
that P(X,Y) = P(X)P(Y). This allows one to define the joint
probability function as:

(6)

where,

, =

b is the number of rolling elements

e is the bearing pitch diameter

is the bearing contact angle

The amplitude associated with the bearing rates
frequency can be used as a CIs, which are a descriptive
statistic of the health of the bearing components..

The process of mapping the CIs to HI is in fact a

threshold setting process. Success is based on correctly
modeling the stochastic nature of the measured CIs, and
have a robust theory based methodology to ensure a low
PFA.
A Theoretical Basis for the Distribution of the CIs.
Assume that there exits a large population of bearing
measurements in nominal condition. Each bearing would
have some process noise, as these are nominal bearings. If
one measured CIs for each bearing fault frequency, one
would expect that the phase of the vibration would be
uniformly distributed, while the magnitude would be some
positive value. One could imagine that if the vibration
vectors were plotted in Cartesian coordinates, there would be
points clustered on the real and imaginary coordinates,
where the magnitude would be:
= ! + !

(7)

Assume for a healthy component that the distribution

around the X and Y axes are Gaussian with zero mean, then:
exp

!!
!! !

(8)

and
=

!
!!! !

(10)

!! !

exp

!!
!! !

(9)

!!

, =

!
!!

exp

!!
!! !

(11)

The expected value, E[M] of this continuous random

variable can then be shown to be:
=

THE HEALTH INDICATOR AS A

FUNCTION OF CONDITION INDICATORS

! ! !! !

The probability density function (PDF) for the

magnitude is then:

d is the ball bearing diameter

!!! !

exp

For this new function of distribution the desired CI is

now a function of X and Y. A change in variables is defined
such that the distribution of the CI is a function of
magnitude, M, instead of P(X,Y).

f is the driving frequency

!
!!! !

!
!

(12)

The variance is then calculated as:

!

!
!
!

!!!
!

= ! 2

!
!

(13)
This distribution is Rayleigh. Note is that this is a
single parameter distribution, that is, mean and variance are
determined by , (identified as beta in the literature) which
is the underlying Gaussian distribution standard deviation.
Setting Thresholds with the HI.
In HI based thresholding, the CIs for a given component
are fused into one HI. Formally, the HI is a function of
distributions. The CI is treated as a random variable from
some distribution, in this case, Rayleigh. Ideally, the HI
should use the information available from the CI to be
sensitive to all failure modes. Additionally, there is
normalization and scaling of the CI such that all HIs are
defined with a common meaning. In practice, the HI is
designed such that the PFA of the HI exceeding a given
threshold, and generating an alert, is small and constant
across all components.
By considering the HI as a function of distribution, it
allows one to the use of statistical tools to quantify HI
performance. Through the method of moments statistical
techniques, it is possible to derive the HI PDF and
cumulative distribution function (CDF). From the CDF, the
critical value (threshold for a given PFA), mean and
variance can be calculated. These values give information
on the behavior of the algorithm at various conditions, and
3

give a priori information for the design of tracking or

smoothing filters.
The HI has been designed such that the PFA is 10-6.
This threshold has been set at 0.5. Thus a warning value of
0.75 has an extraordinarily small probability of false alarm.
As noted, a maintenance practice is set such that
maintenance is performed when the HI exceeds 1.
The Nakagami distribution is similar to the Rayleigh,
Rice and Chi-Square distributions. The Chi-Square
distribution of n degrees of freedom is a transformation of
the Gaussian distributed random variable where
! =

!
!
!!! !

The Nakagami is a generalized case of the square root

of the central Chi-Square distribution. The function
measures a normalized distance:
!
!
!!! !

(15)

The PDF for this distribution is given by Nakagami (Ref

7.) as:
=

!! !
! ! !!

!!!! exp

!! !
!

= [ ! ]

(17)

and is defined as the ratio of moments:

!!
,
![ ! ! !!! ! ]

!
!!

!
!

(18)

By setting = 1, Eq 16 reduces to a Rayleigh PDF.

Noted that Eq. 16 is important in the development of the HI.
Observe that is the expected value of R2, where R2 is a
Chi-Square distribution of n degrees of freedom (e.g. the
number of CI used in the HI function).

Instead, the CIs are summed together, in which case the

distance is compared to a threshold. In order to weight
each CI equally, the CIs are normalized by their standard
deviations (e.g. information matrix). Consider the following,
where CI is a vector of CIs representing the measured
bearing fault frequency energies, and is the sample
covariance from a set of nominal shafts:
! = ! =

(20)

where LL* = -1 is found using the Cholesky

decomposition.
Note that Eq (20) is equivalent to Eq (14), and that by
normalizing the distribution in Eq (20), the effect is that each
individual Rayleigh distributed CIs are now independent and
identical. From equation 18, one sees that = 1/
2 /2 = 1.5264.
If the CIs were zero mean Gaussian, the expected value
of R2 is the number of degrees of freedom. By normalizing
by the covariance, one has:
!
! = !!!
!! / 2 2

Theorem 1: Through the method of moment generating

functions the expected value of a Chi-Square is n, the
degrees of freedom.
It has previously been stated that CIs based on
magnitude such as bearing fault frequency energies have
Rayleigh distribution for the nominal component. Given this
information, a process for establishing an optimal detection
algorithm is presented.

(19)

!
!

With the estimated , one uses the Rayleigh CDF and

set a threshold for any PFA.
During diagnostics
acquisitions, the measured CI is compared against the
threshold and a recommendation made. Again, from a
system perspective, this is not ideal because it gives more
opportunities to generate a false alarm.

(16)

where is the Gamma Function, is defined as

Ideally, one would have available some large number of

bearings from which the bearing energies would be
calculated.
From this, standard deviation could be
calculated and estimated by:

(14)

If the distribution of X is zero mean, R2 is a central ChiSquare. The Rayleigh distribution is the square root of the
central Chi-Square distribution for n = 2 degrees of freedom.

In sampling theory, a representative population is

sampled and statistics are gathered that describes some
underlying phenomena. In the case of a nominal bearing
which are undergoing forced vibration, the statistic that is
estimated is , which is the underlying standard deviation of
the Rayleigh distribution.

(21)

By substitution this is expanded to:

! =

!
!! !

!
!!!

!
!
!!
+ !!
=

!! !

!!
!
!!! ! ,

(0,1)
(22)

where X is a normal Gaussian zero mean with standard

deviation of one. A well know statistical property is:

4

= [ ]

(23)

Taking theorem 1 and Eq (22) and Eq (23), it is stated

that:
Theorem 2: The expected value of the normalized sum
of n Rayleigh distribution is 2n/(2-/2).
This result gives an absolute measure of normality for
any magnitude base HI. With this, is found from Eq (17)
to be 2n/(2-/2) and is found from Eq (18) to be n. These
parameters, coupled with the inverse Nakagami CDF will
give the threshold value for any PFA. This also allows
calculation of the HI mean value and variance.
The HI Algorithm
Now it is a simple matter to now scale the distance
function Eq (7) by the threshold derived from the inverse
Nakagami CDF (defined here as v). Using the Choleskly
decomposition on the inverse covariance to achieve a linear,
whiting transformation: -1 = LL*, then Y = CIxL and:
=

! 0.5/

(24)

In the case of the Rayleigh distributions with four CIs

used for bearing: = 18.639 , = 4, which gives a critical
value, v = 9.97.

RUL CALCULATION USING PARIS LAW

Pariss Law is a sub-critical crack growth model for
homogenous material (Ref 6). It relates the stress intensity
factor to crack growth under fatigue. The model is:
!"
!"

(25)

where

da/dN is the rate of change in the half crack length

per cycle

D is a material constant

K is the range of strain, and

m is the crack growth exponent.

The range of strain, K, is defined as: 2(a)1/2,

where

is the gross strain, generally unknown but

proportional to torque,

is some geometric correction factor, again

generally unknown, and

a is the half crack length, which is proportional to

component health.

These variables are usually specific for some given

material. Without taking too many assumptions, one can
simplify Paris Law by defining the crack growth exponent
as 2 (which is typical for steel), and collapsing the geometric
correction factor (an unknown constants) into D, then: da/dN
= D42a. Here N is the number of cycles, but for constant
rate machines, such as a helicopter gearbox, is proportional
it time. Taking the inverse, one now has:
!"
!"

= 4 !

!!

(26)

Integrating gives the number of cycles (e.g. time) from

the current state a0, to the remaining useful life state, af:
= 4 !

!!

(ln ! ln(! ))

(27)

In Bechhoefer et al. (Ref 8.), an unscented Kalman filter

(UKF) was used to estimate the unknown Paris law
coefficients. The analysis HI was used as a surrogate for the
crack length, a0, whereas ln(af:) = ln(1) = 0, e.g. the final
health (crack length) is 1, which was taken from the policy
of when maintenance should be done. This exampled used
fives states: HI, dHI/dt, RUL, dRUL/dt, and d2RUL/dt2.
While satisfactory results were obtained, it was desirable to
reduce order of operations (e.g. the Big O of matrix
operation is proportional to n2). Additionally, it was
desirable to correct one noticeable issue with the filter: phase
lag. This tended to skew the Health trend and may effect
RUL calculation.
Forward Pass: Kalman Filter
State-space representation of data provides a versatile
and robust way to model systems. Starting with the
definition of the states, and the basic principles underlying
the characterization of phenomena under study, once can
propagate the states as a data driven stochastic process.
The choice of which type of state space model to use is
driven by the nature of the system dynamics and noise
source. If the phenomenology of the system has linear
dynamics with Gaussian noise, a Kalman Filter (KF) is used.
If it is a non-linear process with Gaussian noise, a sigmapoint Bayesian process (e.g. UKF) or extended Kalman filter
(EKF) is appropriate. For non-linear dynamics with nonlinear noise, one would use a sequential Monte Carlo
method employing sequential estimation of the probability
distribution using importance sampling techniques. This
method is generally referred to as particle filtering (PF).
A state space model estimates the state variable on the
basis of measurement of the output and input control
variables (Ref 9). In general, a system plant can be defined
by: = Ax+ Bu, and y = Cx, where x is the state variable,
is the rate of change of the state variable, and y is the output
of the system.

An observer is an auxiliary system used to reconstruct

the state space of the plant. The model of the observer is the
same as that of the plant, except that one adds an additional
term which includes the estimated error to account for
inaccuracies in the A and B matrixes. This means that any
hidden state (such as RUL) can be reconstructed if one can
model the plant (e.g. failure propagation) successfully.

!
!!! = ! !
Covariance
!
!
!!! = ! ! ! + !

The observer is defined as: E[] = E[Ax]+ Bu +K(yE[Cx]), where E[] is the estimate state derivative, and
E[Cx] is the expectation of the system output. The matrix K
is called the Kalman gain matrix (linear, Gaussian case). It is
a weighting matrix that maps the differences between the
measured output y and the estimated output E[Cx]. A KF is
used to optimally set the Kalman gain matrix.
A KF is a recursive algorithm that optimally filters the
measured state based on a priori information such as the
measurement noise, the unknown behavior of the state, and
relationship between the input and output states (e.g. a
plant),
and
the
time
between
measurements.
Computationally, it is attractive because it can be designed
with no matrix inversion and it is a one step, iterative
process. The filtering process is given as:
State Update and Prediction
State

Xt|t-1 = AXt-1|t-1
Covariance
Pt|t-1=APt-1|t-1AT+Q

is the state information (x, dx/dt)

A is the state transition matrix
P is the state covariance matrix
Q is the process noise model

Kalman Gain
K=Pt|t-1CT[CPt|t-1CT+R] -1

K is the Kalman Gain

!! and !! are mean and

covariance
smoother
estimates at time step k.

State

! and ! are the Kalman

filter estimates from the
forward pass, at time step k.

Kalman Smoother Gain

!
! = ! !! !!!

!!

! is the smoother gain.

Smoother State Update

!!
= !
!
+ ! !!!
!
!!!

!
!
! and ! are the predicted
states at time step k+1, which
are the from the Kalman filter

!
!! = ! + ! !!!
!
!
!!! !

Note that the smoother mean , is the current estimated

states (HI, dHI/dt), plus the product of KS.
Gain and the innovation (innovation is the difference in
the forward pass state and the backward pass state) will
generate zero lag..
The step response of the KS vs. KS the shows the effect
of phase delay. The KS is symmetric around the step
response, and settles faster then the KF with less overshoot
(Figure 2).

C is the measurement matrix

R is the measurement
variance
State Update
Pt|t = (I KC) Pt|t-

I is the identity matrix

Xt|t = Xt|t-1+K(Y-CXt|t-1)
Backward Pass: Kalman Filter
Because the Kalman filer (KF) is a recursive algorithm,
its structure is similar to an infinite impulse response filter.
This inherently has a phase lag. The solution to this problem
is the Kalman Smoother (KS), which is a
forward/backward algorithm. The solution is calculated
from the backward pass on the forward KF solution (see Ref
8.):
KS State Update and Prediction

Figure 2 Step Response of KS and KF

When using real world data, the RMS of the KS, of the
HI data (in this example, a high speed bearing), is 4.125 e-4,
vs. the KF, which was 6e-3, or 11.6 dB reduction in noise.
The original time series from the bearing was 1.6e-2. This
6

step response indicates the KS is both more responsive to

changes in the data, such as due to a fault, and has higher
process gain in terms of de-noising the component health.
The KS is an anti-causal filter. This is not a problem with the
operations of a helicopter, where the HI data is analyzed in
batch, at the end of an operation.

VALIDATION AND PROVENANCE OF THE

DATA SET
Over a three-year period, 80+ condition-monitoring
(CM) systems have been deployed on 11 different wind
turbine models, ranging in power from 1.5 MW to 3 MW.
These installations are located at 8 different sites, typically
in remote location with extreme weather. These CM systems
have captured over 50 fault conditions, mostly bearings, but
also gear faults and shaft imbalances. The faults, when
found, are monitored, and usually within 2 weeks, an
inspection is made and maintenance is scheduled. The
presented validation example is based on a high speed
bearing (typical shaft speed, 30 Hz), capturing the fault
propagation over 1200+ hours (50+ days, 144 acquisitions
per day). The operator of this machine was not surprised by
the fault, as the machine had a known serial defect. On
inspection (with an HI of 1.2), the bearing was found to have
a cracked inner race (Figure 3). This shows that the
threshold setting process worked correctly, and that it was
appropriate to do maintenance, was indicated by the RUL.

algorithm. While CI data is downloaded every 30 minutes,

the RUL analysis was scripted to run twice daily.
The RUL analysis is displayed only when the HI is
greater than 0.5 and when the confidence is high. Warnings
are automatically generated when the HI is greater than 0.75,
and alarms when the HI crosses 1. If RUL is available (high
confidence) it is presented along with the warning alert.
Alerts are automatically sent to maintainers.
Kalman Smoother State Design
Simplicity was a design goal: only 2 states were
designed for the KS: HI and dHI/dt. The dHI/dt is
proportional to D. For range of strain, the mean torque for
the last 10 minutes was used. The KS needs a value for
plant noise (i.e. how fast the HI can change) and for
measurement noise (variance of the HI). The plant noise was
chosen by simply estimating the minimum time a fault could
degrade from an HI of 0, to an HI of 1. For this example,
100 hours was used. The HI noise was calculated using the
method of moments (Ref 5.) giving 2 = 0.0001, and the
calculated HI variance 2 was 0.0025. The statistical
properties of the HI are similar across all gears, shafts, and
bearings. This allows the RUL algorithm to work without
individual component tuning values. The RUL was
calculated using the estimated D:
= 4 ! !

!!

ln(! )

(28)

This measured RUL was then used to estimate the

true RUL, using a 3 state KF: RUL, dRUL/dt, d2RUL/dt2.
The first and second derivative of RUL was used to establish
the confidence in the RUL. Conceptually, the rate of change
in the RUL for an accurate (high confidence model) should
be approximately -1 (e.g. the RUL decreases by one hour for
each hour used), and the model should be stable (that is, the
acceleration is near zero).
The use of two Kalman models over one was chosen
because,

It is not necessary to run the KS for the RUL data.

One does not really care about the time series
estimate of RUL, only last (best) estimate of RUL
for the component under analysis.

Kalman models are order of operations (Big O)

of the number of states, squared. The runtime of the
model was cut in half (i.e. Big 0 from 25 to 11)
by using two models vs. one larger model.

Figure 3 Inner Race Fault on the High Speed

Bearing
The HI thresholds were set with using automated tools.
This site location had three machines. Data was gathered for
2 days (about 150 acquisitions) after the initial installation.
Because of the commercial nature, automated configuration
generation is a necessity to reduce personnel cost. The tool
marshals the sample data automatically by component, over
all machines at a site, generates statistics, and then writes an
XML configuration file. The file is then deployed to
Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud application. The cloud
application then applies the new thresholds to measured CI,
for HI data generation. The application then runs the RUL

Operationally, computational loading is a cost driver.

Reducing the computational requirements reduces the size of
the server instance needed to support the application, which
reduces recurring cost.

Sample Results
Figure 4 shows that the raw HI data contains a noise
which increased with fault severity. A subsequent analysis of
the HI itself showed that 25% of the variance was due to the
variation in shaft speed (Wind turbines are not synchronous
machines). This has subsequently been corrected by the use
of a resampling algorithm (similar to TSA, but for bearings,
see Ref. 11). The KS trend is smoother then the KF, and
removes local trend issues that the KF is sensitive to. For
example, at -20 days, the KF HI trend drops. Conceptually,
this would indicate that the bearing repaired or healed
itself, which of course, has not happened. Note that in Figure
5 the RUL estimation approaches the true RUL at time -25.

The ability to estimate RUL is seen as the next

progression of HUMS functionality. This type of data can
help the operator better manage assets, reduced unscheduled
maintenance, and better support the supply chain.
As noted, the usage and estimate of RUL is based on
estimated load. Future enhancements should include RUL
based on mission type, where there is an estimate of the
torque associated by mission profile.

Figure 5 Estimated RUL vs. Time

Author contact:
Figure 4 Raw HI, Kalman Filter and Kalman
Smoother
It is important to understand that the actual RUL is a
function of torque (e.g. load), which for the wind turbines, is
a function of weather. Thus, the local rate of change in HI is
sensitive to accrued toque/usage, but the RUL estimate is
based on future load (e.g. mean torque, see Figure 5).
The range in the RUL can then be controlled by
applying, say, 80% confidence bound on the torque. For a
helicopter, an improve RUL could thus be made by
characterizing torque by mission, and then apply the
expected torque for a given mission to the RUL algorithm.
DISCUSSION
GPMS is currently developing a distributed, low
cost/light weight HUMS for the light and medium helicopter
market. The HUMS ground station will incorporate this
RUL estimation and reporting technologies, which will be
hosted on a server application. The ground station will be
web based, with functionality defined by user roles, such as:
maintainer, pilot, chief pilot, and maintenance control/OEM.
This will allow segregation of data, such as RUL and
engineering data, to those users who need it.

Eric Bechhoefer, eric@gpms-vt.com

Rune Schlanbusch, rune.schlanbusch@teknova.no

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