Component Adaptive Life Management

Abstract

A framework for adaptively managing the life of components. A sensor provides non-destructive test data obtained from inspecting a component. The inspection data may be filtered using reference signatures and by subtracting a baseline. The filtered inspection data and other inspection data for the component is analyzed to locate flaws and estimate the current condition of the component. The current condition may then be used to predict the component's condition at a future time or to predict a future time at which the component's condition will have deteriorated to a certain level. A current condition may be input to a precomputed database to look up the future condition or time. The future condition or time is described by a probability distribution which may be used to assess the risk of component failure. The assessed risk may be used to determine whether the part should continue in service, be replaced or repaired. A hyperlattice database is used with a rapid searching method to estimate at least one material condition and one usage parameter, such as stress level for the component. The hyperlattice is also used to rapidly predict future condition, associated uncertainty and risk of failure.

Description

RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61 / 184,672, filed on Jun. 5, 2009, the entire teachings of which application are incorporated herein by reference.GOVERNMENT SUPPORT[0002]The invention was supported, in whole or in part, by a grant NNX09CE84P from NASA and by a grant N68335-08-C-0008 from the U.S. Navy. The Government has certain rights in the invention.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]There are many applications where using a component to failure is unacceptable, and thus the component must be replaced when the risk of failure is too high. The decision of when to retire a component is a tradeoff between at least the cost of replacement and the risk of failure should the part continue to be used.[0004]Component failure is preceded by deterioration in the condition of the component. Deterioration of a component's condition is caused by the development and growth of flaws in the component. Flaws for metals may include cra...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0013]In another embodiment according to the invention, there is provided a method of predicting a future time at which a critical damage level will be reached. The method comprises inspecting a feature of a component using a non-destructive testing (NDT) method, wherein the NDT method is performed at a plurality of inspection times at a plurality of locations of the component, the NDT method producing inspection data for the plurality of locations at each of the plurality of inspection times; storing the inspection data in a computer-readable storage medium; operating at least one processor to determine, based at least in part on the inspection data, if a damage feature is growing within the component and, when insufficient information exists to reliably detect the damage feature using the inspection data at one of the plurality of inspection times, to generate an enhanced response from the inspection data at two or more of the plurality of inspection times and using a database generated using a model of damage evolution to predict the probability distribution of future times at which the critical damage level will be reached.

[0015]In another embodiment according to the invention, there is provided a method for tracking process progression comprising operating a processor to: process a first inspection image of a component to rank an original plurality of locations of the component, wherein the original plurality of locations are ranked based on a quantitative measure that correlates with predicted crack growth rate at the respective location; filter a second inspection image of the component using filters devised from signatures to suppress indications that are not representative of a condition of interest and enhance the response of conditions that are more likely to represent the condition of interest; and re-rank the original plurality of locations using the filtered second inspection image including additional highly ranked locations, wherein the second inspection image is acquired at a later time than the first inspection image.

Problems solved by technology

The flaw may be a crack in the component and it may be determined that insufficient information exists to reliably detect the crack using the inspection data at one of the plurality of inspection times if a probability of detecting the crack is below a threshold.

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