Military Equipment Maintenance Research Articles

Blockchain Enabled Maintenance Management Framework for Military Equipment

Maintenance of military equipment plays a vital role in achieving higher war readiness. The vast number of military equipment and their deployment on distinct locations make their maintenance a challenging task. Decision-makers are always interested in knowing the latest status of equipment, develop effective maintenance strategies, and predict mission reliability as accurately as possible. To suffice this need, maintenance data of military equipment must be maintained with high granularity and accuracy, including maintenance information about every lowest maintainable unit of every military equipment. There is a profound need for a comprehensive maintenance management framework, which addresses several military-specific issues with equipment maintenance and stores the maintenance data in the utmost secure environment. In this article, we attempt to provide a novel blockchain enabled framework to make military maintenance management comprehensive and future ready. This article first provides a representation of the maintenance scenario of military equipment and later discusses the several choices made available within the blockchain technology, along with the architecture of the proposed blockchain. The proposed framework uses smart contracts to make monitoring and validation more uncompromising and with minimum human intervention. Some pragmatic analytics are presented in this article, along with the inherent blockchain advantages.

РЕКОМЕНДАЦІЇ ЩОДО ПРОЕКТУВАННЯ РЕМОНТНО-ВІДНОВЛЮВАЛЬНИХОРГАНІВ ПІД ЧАС УПРАВЛІННЯ ТЕХНІЧНИМ СТАНОМ ВІЙСЬКОВОЇ ТЕХНІКИ

Improving the quality of managing the technical condition of military equipment is achieved by maintaining the required amount of operational military equipment, the time it is used for its intended purpose, and the timely recovery of military equipment under conditions of combat actions. The article develops recommendations for the design of repair and recovery bodies while managing technical condition of military equipment based on an improved technique for determining and adjusting the optimal frequency of military equipment maintenance. The proposed structure of repair and recovery bodies has to meet the following requirements: to ensure performing the assigned tasks by troops, through maintaining military equipment in serviceable condition and its timely recovery; to perform recovery work in the field with minimal time outlays, expenses of efforts and resources; to be equipped with high-performance, advanced versatile equipment that meets the conditions of its application; by constant readiness to perform functional tasks in accordance with their purpose; the possibility of echeloning with preservation of technological independence; the ability to perform their functional tasks in any conditions and at any time, with minimal non-productive time outlays; the availability of appropriate tactics of application, functional purpose and place in the operational forming-up of communications and command and control troops. The proposed recommendations allow to develop a new structure of repair and recovery bodies, separately for each case of their application depending on the type of combat actions and the situation in which military equipment is used for its intended purpose, as well as to eliminate failures in the process of management of military equipment in the process of managing the technical condition of military equipment under conditions of combat actions, that will allow to increase the efficiency of management and ensure effective organization of the process of managing the recovery of military equipment.

Research on Flexible Equipment Maintenance Process Scheduling Problems Based on HNSGSA Algorithm

The characteristics of military equipment maintenance work are analyzed. According to the actual needs of the army, the optimization objective is designed, and a multiobjective flexible maintenance process optimization model is built based on the maintenance business organization process. Combining the advantages of NSGA-II algorithm and the simulated annealing algorithm, this paper proposes a novel improved HNSGSA algorithm, of which algorithm flow is detailed. In accordance with the requirements of the optimization model, this paper also specifically designs the coding methods of the process sequence, the equipment selection and the process scheduling, and the corresponding cross mutation method. The feasibility of the built model is verified by the actual data of maintenance business. And, the superiority, accuracy, and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm are further validated by the comparison with the NSGA-II algorithm and the simulated annealing algorithm, providing a scientific reference for the army to carry out equipment maintenance.

АДАПТАЦІЯ ЄДИНОЇ СИСТЕМИ ТЕХНІЧНОГО ОБСЛУГОВУВАННЯ І РЕМОНТУ ОЗБРОЄННЯ ТА ВІЙСЬКОВОЇ ТЕХНІКИ ПІД НОВУСИСТЕМУ ЗБРОЙНИХ СИЛ УКРАЇНИ

The views on improvement of the existing system of weapons and military equipment maintenance by adapting to therequirements of the present time and of a new state of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are developed in the article. In modern conditions, the current system of maintenance and repair of weapons and military equipment conceptually does not meet the requirements of the new system of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and cannot provide solutions to the challenges that face it. It is based on inadequate modern regulatory and technical documentation, non-adaptive to such factors: – competitive mechanisms for placing orders for maintenance and repair; – the functioning of the military-industrial complex in a market economy and a variety of forms of ownership; – a sharp reduction in the number of personnel that can be involved in the carrying out of actions, and lowering the level of his qualifications; – the need for the full participation of industrial enterprises in the maintenance and repair of both new types of weapons and military equipment (due to their difficult design), and that of weapons that are in operation (due to their deterioration). Based on this, to implement the idea of creating a new system of service maintenance and repair of weapons and military equipment, it is necessary to carry out a set of measures regarding: 1. The reprocessing of normative and technical documentation for the maintenance and repair of weapons and military equipment in order to form, with respect to each sample, the entire complex of regulated documents agreed upon with the developers (persons entrusted with their work) with the establishment of clear warranty responsibilities. 2. Preparation of a list of groups of weapons and military equipment, in part of which an approach can be implemented with responsibility for supplying enterprises or repair enterprises for maintaining them to the specified degree of readiness for intended use. 3. The construction of optimal logistic schemes, as well as the organization of integrated service centers for post-warranty maintenance and repair of weapons and military equipment in areas close to places of deployment. 4. Formation of a base for recording the technical condition of each type of weapon in order to determine the need for maintenance and repair measures to maintain weapons and military equipment in the established degrees of readiness for intended use and forecasting on this basis the amount of necessary resources for the short and medium term for use in the formation and refinement of the State program of reforming the Armed Forces of Ukraine. 5. The formation, based on a combination of economic and administrative mechanisms, of an effective system for monitoring the volume and quality of work carried out as part of service maintenance and repair. Keywords: weapons and military equipment, service maintenance, maintenance system.

Augmented Reality in Maintenance Training for Military Equipment

After more than 20 years of development, augmented reality technology has shown a strong development momentum, successfully applied in civil and military fields. And augmented reality maintenance system is one of the most typical application. This paper introduces the present situation of augmented reality maintenance system, illustrates the structure of a typical system, discuss key technologies of augmented reality maintenance, and investigates the insufficiencies of it in military equipment maintenance according to the contemporary condition. Eventually, this paper indicates the potential development tendency of the augmented reality military equipment maintenance system in the future.

JUSTIFICATION OF MAINTENANCE PARAMETERS OF A WEAPONS AND MILITARY EQUIPMENT SAMPLE WITH REGARD TO STRUCTURE, TIME-BASED REDUNDANCY AND LEVELS OF HEALTH

The subject matter of the article is the maintenance of armored weapons and military equipment samples used for their intended purpose. The goal of the study is to justify the optimal values of service parameters. The tasks to be solved are: to develop a mathematical model of the functioning process of the weapons and military equipment sample subsystems with periodic maintenance taking into account its structure, time redundancy and levels of performance; to cary out composition of the weapons and military equipment sample into separate subsystems to justify the choice of the most appropriate maintenance strategy for each of them, to determine the optimal maintenance strategy taking into account the operating conditions, units and units involved. General scientific and special methods of scientific knowledge are used. The following results are obtained: It is proposed to determine the optimal values of maintenance periodicity for individual subsystems of the sample of weapons and military equipment, taking into account the reserves of time and features of operation, as well as combining the operations of maintenance of individual subsystems into a single set of works for the sample as a whole based on the representation of the process of operation of the subsystem of the subsystem of the subsystem as a mathematical model of a random semi-Markov process. Conclusions. An analysis of the existing maintenance and repair strategies has shown their single-handedly inefficient in the weapons and military equipment sample operating. The example of the T-64B shows that to put troops into practice, a proper justification and a complex combination of existing strategies is required, ie the creation of a new mixed strategy and efficient use of equipment. It is proposed to decompose the weapons and military equipment sample into separate functionally completed subsystems, justifying the choice of the most appropriate maintenance strategies for them (with periodic or maintenance status), determining for each subsystem the optimal strategy and accordingly the periodicity of maintenance taking into account the time reserves and operation features, as well as separate subsystems into a single set of weapons and military equipment sample works for the sample as a whole. Optimal values of maintenance periodicity and coefficient of technical use are obtained by means of a mathematical model of the process of functioning of the T-64B subsystems with periodic maintenance in the form of a random semi-Markov process. The results of the calculations show that for such tank subsystems as power plant, transmission and undercarriage, electrics, it is advisable to choose a maintenance strategy with periodic maintenance, and for a fire control and air purification system maintenance as a condition. The results obtained can be used in the future to develop suggestions for improving the equipment used to diagnose the technical condition of the weapons and military equipment sample. Improvement of the equipment used in the weapons and military equipment maintenance and repair will significantly increase the depth and quality of determining the technical condition of the objects, and therefore the correctness and efficiency of maintenance.

Research on Application of FMECA in Missile Equipment Maintenance Decision

Fault mode effects and criticality analysis (FMECA) is a method widely used in engineering. Studying the application of FMEA technology in military equipment maintenance decision-making, can help us build a better equipment maintenance support system, and increase the using efficiency of weapons and equipment. Through Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) of equipment, known and potential failure modes and their causes are found out, and the influence on the equipment performance, operation success, personnel security are determined. Furthermore, according to the synthetical effects of the severity of effects and the failure probability, possible measures for prevention and correction are put forward. Through replacing or adjusting the corresponding parts, corresponding maintenance strategy is decided for preventive maintenance of equipment, which helps improve the equipment reliability.

Evaluation of artillery equipment maintenance support capability based on grey clustering

This paper, the theory and method of evaluating the capability of equipment maintenance support in China and abroad are studied, from the point of view of the combat task of artillery troops and the strategic attachment in the future military struggle. This paper establishes the framework of the evaluation Index system of the equipment maintenance support capability of the artillery units, and applies the grey clustering method to the evaluation of the equipment maintenance support capability of the artillery units, and finally evaluates the equipment maintenance and support capability of the artillery brigade as an example, and analyzes the evaluation results. This paper finds out the outstanding problems existing in the maintenance and support of military equipment, and puts forward some constructive suggestions, in order to improve the status of military equipment maintenance and support and improve the level of future equipment maintenance.

Theoretical Approaches on the Modernization of Military Equipment Maintenance

Abstract The article proposes an analysis of the transformation and modernization of the maintenance system of the military equipment together with the adaptation to military technical systems typology existing in equipping Romanian Army. Technological development of weapon systems in recent decades has imposed adjustment of methodologies for repairs and maintenance to obtain some availability coefficients, assumed for technical systems placed in endowment. Although political and economic conditions were hostile at times, the need to align to the geo-strategic reality has led to the remarkable development of military equipment and to improvement of their maintenance. Endowment with complex military equipment including subsystems in various domains (mechatronic, ballistics, information technology, optical, thermal, chemical, hydro-pneumatic and so on) has created prerequisites for the transformation and modernization of operating systems, logistics, maintenance, whose procedures involve optimization methods to meet the requirements of the modern battlefield.

Cost-efficiency analysis of weapon system portfolios

Decisions about the acquisition and maintenance of military equipment serve to build long-term capabilities in preparation of military conflicts. Typically, these decisions involve large investments which need to be supported by adequate cost-efficiency analyses. Yet the cost-efficiency analysis of weapon systems involves several challenges: for example, it is necessary to account for the possible interactions among different weapon systems; the relevance of several impact criteria; and the variety of combat situations in which these systems may be used. In this paper, we develop a portfolio methodology where these challenges are addressed by evaluating the cost-efficiencies of entire portfolios consisting of individual weapon systems. Our methodology accounts for possible interactions among systems by synthesizing impact assessment results that are either generated by combat simulation models or elicited from experts. It also admits incomplete preference information about the relative importance of different impact criteria. This methodology guides decision making by identifying which combinations of weapon systems are efficient with respect to multiple evaluation criteria in different combat situations at different cost levels. It can also be extended to settings where multiple combat situations are addressed simultaneously. The methodology is generic and can therefore be applied also in civilian settings when portfolios of activities (such as mitigation of harmful environmental emissions) may exhibit interactions.

Study on Universal Testing Platform of Engineering Machinery

Due to the multiple types and complexity of fault diagnosis, the general-purpose testing platform of engineering machinery’s hydraulic system is developed for the maintenance of military equipment. The general function and structure of the testing platform is presented. The hardware system consists of modular circuit, integrates control computer of embedded controller with PXI-interfaced modular instrument, program-controlled device, connector and adapter hardware. And the software program comprises data management module, fault diagnosis module coupled to the data acquisition module, signal processing module, experiment condition control module, database access module, system configuration and self-test as well as help module. Further, the hardware characteristics are showed and the principle of hydraulic testing platform is presented. The universal testing platform offers enormous benefits for fault diagnosis and condition monitoring of military equipment and machinery.

Contributions of Surface Engineering to Military Equipment Maintenance

In recent years, surface engineering technology has developed rapidly in China and has its unique position in government science and technology development plan. As an end user, the community of equipment maintenance has steadily focused on the latest progress of surface engineering technology and quickly introduces its achievements into equipment maintenance to improve the operational performance of weapon systems and supporting facilities. It was found during an investigation of maintenance techniques that surface engineering technology was widely used in military equipment maintenance and had made great impact for their effectiveness. Applications of surface engineering technology such as nano-surface, thermal spraying, bonding and coating, co-osmosis in maintaining and repairing airplanes, vessels, submarines, vehicles and artillery have greatly enhanced their capabilities to resist wear and tear, erosion and fatigue and dramatically improved their operational efficiency and effectiveness. Surface engineering technology has made significant contributions to maintain operational readiness of equipment and weapon systems which, in turn, has generated huge martial and economical profits.