Monitor Threshold Analysis for Hazard and Nuisance Boundaries
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing monitor systems in complex systems, such as aircraft, face challenges in accurately determining robustness and failure detection capabilities, leading to potential nuisance alerts due to unreasonably selected monitor limits and confirmation times, which can result in increased maintenance overhead and false alarms.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that identifies system hazard and nuisance boundaries to determine must-trip and must-not-trip conditions, calculates protection and nuisance margins, and confirms selected thresholds and confirmation times within specific limits, initiating corrective actions if these conditions are not met, thereby enhancing monitor performance analysis.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If monitor limits are selected based on past experience or fixed percentage deviation, then monitor setup is simplified, but monitor robustness and accuracy deteriorate due to unaccounted system variations
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by automatically determining hazard and nuisance boundaries, must-trip and must-not-trip conditions, and calculating protection margins before monitor limits are set. This preliminary analysis accounts for system variations, sensor accuracies, and environmental factors, ensuring robust monitor configuration without requiring complex manual setup by operators.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary analysis layer that mediates between simple limit selection and complex system variations. This intermediary process calculates protection margins and validates monitor conditions by considering sensor accuracies, environmental factors, and system tolerances, translating complex system characteristics into optimized monitor limits.
2Speed
If unreasonably short confirmation time or tight tolerance on monitor limits is selected, then fault detection speed is improved, but nuisance alerts increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system optimizes confirmation time and monitor limit parameters by calculating protection margins and validating against hazard and nuisance boundaries. Rather than using fixed or arbitrary parameter values, the system determines optimal parameters based on system-specific characteristics, ensuring fast fault detection while avoiding nuisance alerts from normal system variations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements feedback by validating monitor conditions against calculated protection margins and boundaries. The system continuously ensures that selected confirmation times and tolerances maintain adequate protection margins, providing feedback on whether parameter selections will lead to nuisance alerts or missed detections, allowing optimization of detection speed versus alert accuracy.
3Reliability
If leave monitors active when monitored component is not in operative state, then monitor coverage is improved, but nuisance alerts and maintenance overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables dynamic monitor configuration by determining operative states and adjusting monitor activation accordingly. Rather than statically leaving all monitors active or inactive, the system dynamically configures monitor states based on whether monitored components are in operative states, maintaining adequate coverage while preventing nuisance alerts from non-operational components.
4Measurement precision
If comprehensive analysis of system variations is performed to improve monitor accuracy, then monitor precision is improved, but analysis complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and separates the complex analysis of system variations into distinct, manageable components: hazard boundary determination, nuisance boundary determination, must-trip condition identification, and protection margin calculation. By taking out and addressing each factor separately through systematic procedures, the system achieves comprehensive analysis accuracy without overwhelming operational complexity.
Data Source
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AI summary
A system includes a processor and a memory system in communication with the processor. The memory system stores instructions that when executed by the processor result in the system being operable to identify a system hazard boundary of a monitored system and a system nuisance boundary of the monitored system. The system is also operable to determine a must-trip condition based on the system hazard boundary and a must-not-trip condition based on the system nuisance boundary. The system is further operable to output a protection margin for the monitored system based on the system hazard boundary and a difference between the must-trip condition and the must-not-trip condition.