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Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) systems are being developed
for the Second Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV), crew, and
cargo transfer vehicles. These highly integrated systems will likely
include advanced smart sensors, diagnostic and prognostics software
for sensors and components, model based reasoning systems for subsystem
and system level managers, advanced on-board and ground-based mission
and maintenance planners, and a host of other software and hardware
technologies. These hardware and software technologies will be embedded
in the vehicle subsystems, maintenance operations, and launch and
mission operations elements, and will provide both real-time and life-cycle
vehicle health information which will enable informed decision making
and logistics management. Knowledge databases of the vehicle health
state will be continuously updated and reported for critical failure
modes, and routinely updated and reported for life cycle condition
trending.
Sufficient intelligence will be included in the IVHM and related
vehicle systems to result in more rapid recognition of off-nominal
operation to enable quicker corrective actions. This will result
from the IVHM system providing better information (rather than just
data) for improved crew/operator situational awareness, which will
produce significant vehicle and crew safety improvements, as well
as increasing the chance for mission completion.
Other IVHM benefits include improved reliability, availability,
and cost of operations. Most major subsystems, processing elements,
and operations elements are likely to benefit from IVHM technologies,
including: propulsion, power, structures, thermal protection systems,
avionics, Orbital Maneuvering Systems (OMS), Reaction Control Systems
(RCS), crew systems, vehicle turnaround/logistics, launch operations,
and mission operations. Another IVHM benefit will be reduced fatigue
accumulation rates of systems and structures due to less cycling.
Cost benefits include: significantly reduced processing and operations
manpower, predictive maintenance for main engines and other high
maintenance systems, lower DDT&E costs due to factory enabled
Built In Test (BIT). The improvements in vehicle turnaround and
cost will be due to prognostic and diagnostic capability resulting
in less actual maintenance being performed due to the detailed vehicle
health knowledge from IVHM. A collateral benefit is that there will
be fewer maintenance induced (disturbed system) discrepancies and
more of the vehicle/component lives used during actual operation.
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