A new low-cost stand-off vibration sensor based on the Doppler radar principle is presented. The baseline performance of this sensor was compared with a high-quality accelerometer in a well-controlled laboratory environment. This advanced vibration imaging sensor (ADVISER) was also validated for its prognostic health monitoring ability with a fault emulator. The ADVISER was able to detect machine misbalance and bearing damage at a distance of 4 feet without making any contact. This exceeded the performance of a high-quality screw accelerometer mounted directly on the bearing enclosure.

Distributed wireless architecture for prognostics is an important enabling step in prognostic research in order to achieve feasible real-time system health management. A significant problem encountered in implementation of such architectures is power management. In this paper, we present robust power management techniques for a generic health management architecture that involves diagnostics and prognostics for a system comprising multiple heterogeneous components.

Self-sealing or self-healing materials can be found in many applications, including automotive and aerospace, and remain a topic for current research. The nature of these materials allows damage to be repaired autonomously. This can improve safety and reliability, but also pose challenges for structural health monitoring and prognostics. One goal of structural health monitoring is to monitor the accumulation of minor damage and degradation in order to predict and prevent catastrophic failure.

One of the most important issues when dealing with PHM developments is the availability of adequate sensors to provide measures that indicate the health state of a component or system. Installation of additional sensors for such purpose usually implies increments in costs and weight and reduction of reliability and availability. Sometimes equivalent information can be inferred from other available sources, allowing the design of PHM solutions with no need for additional sensors. The power consumed by a set of components may provide information concerning their health states.

The integration of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems into in-service applications has been hindered by the implied infrastructure, specifically wires for power and data from each sensor an acquisition and/or processing unit. Prior research by the present investigators has demonstrated a patented method of point-of-measurement datalogging for SHM, thereby greatly reducing the required quantity of cable by locally converting analog signals into digital data that can be placed on a common sensor-bus.