Network performance analysis for CBM implementation based on OSA-CBM framework

Abstract

In aircraft industry, after labour and fuel costs, maintenance costs are the third largest expense item for both regional and national carriers. By implementing CBM technologies not only the maintenance costs can be reduced, also it can provide more specific scheduled maintenance, onboard diagnostics and prognostics services. Maintenance department can be notified about the fault in advance and can arrange for components while aircraft is in mid-air. CBM technologies minimize the physical diagnostics costs and provide more realistic condition based maintenance (CBM). The aim of this project is to create and analyse network architecture for Condition Based Maintenance Systems. CBM consists of subsystems, sensors, model based reasoning systems for subsystem and system level managers, diagnostic and prognostics software for subsystems. In CBM systems, usually there is large amount of data (collected from sensors), which needs to be delivered to right places at the right time so communication paradigm is very essential design consideration which impacts many key properties such as scalability, reliability, availability, timeliness and cost of overall system. The OSA-CBM (Open System Architecture for Condition Based Maintenance) is an open standard that defines an open architecture for moving information in a condition-based maintenance system. Typically, companies developing condition-based maintenance systems must develop software and hardware components, in addition a framework for these components to integrate. OSA-CBM is a standard framework for implementing condition-based maintenance systems. It not only describes the six functional blocks of condition based maintenance systems but also the interfaces to establish communication among these blocks. OSA-CBM specifies the input and output between the CBM modules. In simple words, it describes the information that is moved and how to move it. OSA-CBM can be implemented using various available distributed middleware but it is not clear which implementation is more efficient. This paper presents an approach to design, implement and analysis of network architecture of CBM systems using OSACBM data model.