Present and Future Diagnostics and Prognostics of Ground Combat Vehicles
Abstract
Diagnostics capability of ground combat vehicles has to be compatible with the Army Diagnostic Improvement Program. Present systems are capable of performing health monitoring and health checks using internal embedded resources. They employ standard sensors and data bases that monitor data signals, measurements and built-in test (BIT). These devices provide a comprehensive source of data to accomplish complete and accurate system level diagnostics and fault isolation at line replaceable unit (LRU) level. They provide system health monitoring and prognostics capability for subsystems consisting of engine, transmission, power pack interface, gauge cluster unit and others. Prognostics routines provide diagnostics capability to identify the cause of failure, when failure is predicted, and corrective action to prevent unscheduled maintenance action. Ground combat vehicle's health status and prognostic information are displayed to operator, crew, and maintenance personnel. Present systems use common data/information interchange network in accordance with standards defined in the Joint Technical Architecture (JTA) to provide access to vehicle's health data. The technologies utilized in present systems include embedded diagnostics, combat maintainer, revised maintenance concept, schematic viewer, etc. Implementation of these technologies significantly reduced maintenance hours of ground combat vehicles. Today's Main Battle Tanks (MBT) contains a multitude of processors. Yet systems such as Abrams provide redundancy only between the hull electronics unit and the turret electronics unit. The Abrams employs duplicate processors hosting redundant software in different vehicle compartments. Over a half a million lines of software code span multiple processors. The software in the Abrams tank was created in a highly sophisticated development and testing environment.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 09, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA459548
Entities
People
- Christopher Miles
- Elena Bankowski
Organizations
- Tank-automotive and Armaments Command