Method and system for maintaining on-board reasoner to diagnose faults on aircraft

Abstract

A method is provided for maintaining an onboard reasoner for diagnosing failures on an aircraft that includes aircraft systems configured to report faults to the onboard reasoner. The method includes accessing diagnostic data received from an onboard computer of the aircraft that includes the onboard reasoner. An off-board reasoner builds an off-board diagnostic causal model that describes causal relationships between the failed tests and the diagnosed failure modes. The off-board diagnostic causal model is compared to the diagnostic data. Based thereon, a discrepancy is identified between the graph of the off-board diagnostic causal model, and the other graph of the onboard diagnostic causal model, to determine a new causal relationship relative to the known causal relationships. The onboard diagnostic causal model is updated to further describe the new causal relationship, including producing an updated model, and uploading the updated model to the onboard computer.

Description

technical field [0001] The present disclosure relates generally to aircraft maintenance, and more particularly to on-board diagnostics of aircraft system failure modes and related aircraft maintenance. Background technique [0002] Complex systems such as machines including vehicles such as airplanes, spacecraft, ships, motor vehicles, rail vehicles typically include some type of performance monitoring system that records data about the performance of the machine, including the machine's Performance of various systems (and subsystems). Data includes records of certain performance events that occur during the operation of the machine. Performance monitoring systems typically perform data collection and report all collected data to users. Users can then leverage the data to determine the type, if any, of maintenance or repairs a machine might need. For example, if the data indicates that a particular mechanical or electromechanical system of a machine is malfunctioning or t...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

This can be time consuming and does not always result in the most appropriate maintenance action being performed first, especially for complex machines such as aircraft and other vehicles

With many types of machines, especially commercial vehicles, the amount of time the vehicle is out of service is costly to the vehicle owner

As such, the longer it takes to perform the most appropriate repair action for a given failure mode, the longer the vehicle will be out of service, which can be costly to the vehicle owner if the vehicle would otherwise be in service

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