System for monitoring a set of components of a device

• US 9,754,429 B2
• Filed: 10/25/2013
• Issued: 09/05/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 10/26/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Safran Aircraft Engine Company
• Original Assignee: Snecma (Safran SA)
• Inventors: Lacaille, Jerome, Rabenoro, Tsirizo
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Nga X
• Application Number:
  US14/438,129
• Publication Number:
  US 20150287249A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,411 Days
• Field of Search: 701 311- 319
• CPC Class Codes: B64D 2045/0085 Devices for aircraft health monitoring, e.g. monitoring flutter or vibration
• CPC Class Codes: B64D 45/00 Aircraft indicators or protectors not otherwise provided for camouflage F41H3/00
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0251 Abstraction hierarchy, e.g. "complex systems", i.e. system is divided in subsystems, subsystems are monitored and results are combined to decide on status of whole system
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 5/006 Indicating maintenance
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 5/0808 Diagnosing performance data testing of vehicles G01M17/00; testing of electrical installation on vehicles G01R31/005

Abstract

A system for monitoring a set of components of a device, including: a detecting system including a set of agents for detecting anomalies, with each agent receiving measurements on physical parameters relating to a sub-set of components of a device and delivering an initial distribution of the probability of an anomaly; an acquiring system which receives feedback information and the initial distributions of the probability of an anomaly from the agents; an emerging system which iteratively emerges current distributions of the probability of an anomaly, with the current distributions of the probability of an anomaly converging towards a set of optimum distributions of the probability of an anomaly; and a synthesizing system which synthesizes optimum distributions of the probability of an anomaly relating to at least one sub-set of interest of components of the device in order to extract the risks of an anomaly specific to the sub-set of interest.

Claims

1. A system for monitoring a set of components of an aircraft engine, comprising:

circuitry configured to;

detect anomalies using a set of agents for detecting anomalies (a₁, . . . , a_i, . . . a_n) with each one of said agents being configured to receive measurements on physical parameters relating to a sub-set of components of said aircraft engine and to deliver an initial distribution of a probability of an anomaly,

receive feedback information as well as the initial distributions of the probability of an anomaly coming from said set of agents,

iteratively emerge current distributions of the probability of an anomaly in line with said feedback information, with said current distributions of the probability of an anomaly converging towards a set of optimum distributions of the probability of an anomaly in accordance with said feedback information,

synthesise optimal distributions of the probability of an anomaly relating to at least one sub-set of interest of components of said aircraft engine in order to extract risks of an anomaly specific to said sub-set of interest, and

determine operations of maintenance according to the risks of an anomaly.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the circuitry is further configured to:

create each current or optimum distribution of the probability of an anomaly by merging preceding distributions of the probability of an anomaly according to predetermined rules for merging,

put into line each initial or current distribution of the probability of an anomaly with the feedback information that corresponds to the distribution of the probability of an anomaly, in order to associate an efficiency value to the distribution of the probability of an anomaly, and

change the set of agents towards an optimum population of agents by creating new agents corresponding to current and optimum distributions of the probability of an anomaly and by selecting the agents that are the most compliant with the feedback information according to the efficiency values associated with said current and optimum distributions of the probability of an anomaly.

3. The system according to claim 1, wherein the circuitry is further configured to associate to each initial, current or optimum distribution of the probability of an anomaly relative to a sub-set of components of said device, an implication vector reflecting a contribution of each element of said sub-set on the corresponding distribution of the probability of an anomaly.

4. The system according to claim 3, wherein the circuitry is further configured to synthesise the optimum distributions of the probability of an anomaly relating to said sub-set of interest by weighting an influence of each element of said sub-set of interest according to the corresponding implication vectors.

5. The system according to claim 2, wherein the predefined rules for merging are chosen from among the following rules:

expert rules, reduction rules, voting rule, business rules, Bayesian rules, and fuzzy logic rules.

6. The system according to claim 2, wherein the circuitry is further configured to adjust the merging rules according to the feedback information.

7. The system according to claim 2, wherein the set of agents or the optimum population of agents is formed by instances of algorithms comprising different choices of measurements, or different processing methods, or different configurations.

8. The system as claimed in claim 7, wherein the initial distributions of the probability of an anomaly are standardised with respect to a context of the measurements.

9. A method for monitoring a set of components of an aircraft engine, comprising:

acquiring feedback information as well as initial distributions of a probability of an anomaly coming from a set of agents for detecting anomalies, with each one of said agents being configured to receive measurements on physical parameters relating to a sub-set of components of said aircraft engine before delivering an initial distribution of the probability of an anomaly,

iteratively emerging current distributions of the probability of an anomaly in line with said feedback information, with said current distributions of the probability of an anomaly converging towards a set of optimum distributions of the probability of an anomaly in accordance with said feedback information,

synthesising optimum distributions of the probability of an anomaly relating to at least one sub-set of interest of components of said aircraft engine in order to extract risks of an anomaly specific to said sub-set of interest, and

determining operations of maintenance according to the risks of an anomaly.