FAILURE PREDICTION OF CRITICAL COMPONENTS IN MILITARY VEHICLES

摘要

Military vehicles are exposed to harsh environments such that improved reliability of critical components is necessary to achieve lower fleet costs and satisfy mission objectives. This study investigates the reliability of critical components in a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), which is a widely used tactical vehicle. After a comprehensive literature review and discussion with vehicle experts, it was determined that the HMMWV alternator is not only crucial to the vehicle's reliability but also very suitable for the implementation of prognostic tools. A testbed is currently being constructed to simulate the alternator's use on the HMMWV, on which both a new and faulty alternator will be implemented to collect data for algorithm training purposes, with features extracted from both the electrical and vibratory data of each alternator. These features will be utilized by intelligent algorithms to measure the level of degradation that has occurred over time, represented by a confidence value (CV). This methodology demonstrates a promising way to determine the health of the alternator during its operation, and to possibly predict its failure before it occurs. Once validated, this approach can also be applied to other critical components of military vehicles.