"Sentient Corporation, in partnership with The Timken Company and the Mechanical Engineering Tribology Laboratory (METL) at Purdue University, proposes the development of comprehensive and accurate fault initiation/progression models for rollingbearings. Models will be developed for all common… More

Military and commercial aircraft operators are moving toward predictive maintenance to minimize costs while maximizing asset availability and safety. Key technological prerequisites for this new approach are the ability to monitor the condition of critical components, and the ability to accurately… More

Lubrication problems in rolling element bearings are the leading cause of failure in spacecraft momentum/reaction wheels, control moment gyros, gimbals, and similar applications. Condition monitoring technologies developed for terrestrial or aircraft applications are not adequate due to unique… More

Emerging prognostics and health management (PHM) technologies will reduce maintenance costs for military aircraft while improving safety and availability. On the Joint Strike Fighter, software modules supplied by multiple vendors will be assembled into PHM area reasoners. System integrators will… More

Bearing failure in satellite applications is related to lubricant starvation rather than fatigue, and health monitoring systems for these applications must be able to observe subtle changes related to lubrication state. Phase I included an experimental study to identify candidate monitoring… More

Hanger bearing failures occur unexpectedly and have resulted in loss of aircraft and life in both military and civilian rotorcraft. New Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) that are currently being demonstrated on the UH-60 include sensing capabilities that offer the potential to diagnose and… More

During Phase I, the Blackhawk hanger bearing and oil cooler fan bearing applications were studied in detail, including analysis of vibration and temperature data from used oil cooler bench tests (conducted by Sikorsky) and used hanger bearing bench tests (conducted by Sentient). This data, along… More

Development of accurate and effective new diagnostic and prognostic capabilities for JSF PHM will require extensive data on both health and faulted systems states. While healthy signatures can be collected quickly and easily, faulted systems are only observed rarely, and duplicating faulted… More

Modern turbine engine lifing approaches compute damage accumulation in real time based on actual usage, substantially increasing the useable life over a-priori cycle or hour limits based on assumed worst-case operating conditions. However, these new algorithms are complex, consume substantial… More

The latent degradation of precision control system actuators affects dynamic performance and can push the performance characteristics of the actuator out of the regime needed for stable operation of the aircraft control system. Current system-level methods are not sensitive enough to actuator… More

Fault detection and isolation algorithms are often developed with data from steady-state tests, and many algorithms perform well under these controlled conditions. However, when diagnostics are used in highly dynamic environments, sensitivities to changing loads or speeds become apparent. Vibration… More

Grease lubricated bearings are widely used in aircraft for driveshaft support, fans, and accessories. These components are a maintenance intensive item requiring regular replenishment or replacement. In addition, occasional failures occur and have resulted in loss of aircraft. Sentient Corporation,… More

The F-35 prognostic health management (PHM) system will generate a large volume of data on current and predicted component health. Tools are needed to automatically assimilate and analyze this data, and present findings and recommended actions to the user. These automated reasoner tools are… More

The military is actively implementing diagnostics, prognostics, and health management technologies across platforms in an effort to reduce maintenance costs, increase readiness and availability, and improve safety. In aircraft electric power systems, the largest maintenance driver is the generator,… More

Diagnostic and prognostic algorithms for many aircraft subsystems are steadily maturing. Unfortunately there is little experience integrating these technologies into a complete and practical on-board prognosis system, and integration often proceeds in an ad-hoc manner. Sentient Corporation proposes… More

Although prognostic health monitoring systems for the mechanical aspects of the LAV-25 are currently under development, a comparable system for diagnosis of the electrical and weapons systems does not exist. System diagnosis is an expertise-based craft that is easily lost when turnover rates (due… More

A great deal of effort has been put into health management of turbine engine turbomachinery components, such as bearings, disks and blades, while engine externals have received less research attention. Accessories on gas turbine engines include electrical, hydraulic, lubrication, and fuel… More

Obtaining reliable diagnostic information on turbine engine main shaft bearings is difficult due to space constraints, operating environment, and poor transmissibility of vibration from the bearing to a case-mounted accelerometer. Prior work has shown that bearing cage parameters provide valuable… More

Research into voice transformation has been ongoing for over twenty years. In addition, there are many commercial products available. There has been very little research, however, into techniques for detection of voice transformation. Furthermore, objective metrics for the quality of transformed… More

Wind energy has numerous benefits as a power source, including price stability, lack of greenhouse gas emissions, revitalization of rural areas, and lack of dependence on imported fuels. As wind increases its penetration into the US power market, it is imperative to minimize costs and maximize… More

Latent degradation of propulsion actuators adversely impacts the stability and dynamic performance of the aircraft control system. Sentient's Phase I effort successfully demonstrated the feasibility of monitoring actuator degradation using robust and computationally inexpensive hybrid model/feature… More

The overall objective of this project is to develop an effective and practical diagnostic/prognostic capability for turbine engine accessories. The Phase I effort demonstrated the effectiveness of combining high fidelity physics-based models with feature based algorithms to diagnose incipient faults… More

The objective of this project is to develop an autonomous cage sensor for a turbine engine bearing. The particular bearing of interest is a turbine engine inter-shaft bearing, a bearing that is inaccessible and therefore very difficult to monitor using traditional methods. The cage sensor must… More

Comprehensive health monitoring systems are fielded on some Navy aircraft, including the Integrated Aircraft Health Monitoring (IAHM) on the F/A-18, and rotorcraft Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) on a subset of the Navy's H-60 and H-53 inventory. Due to the early successes and benefits… More

The objective of this research is to develop algorithms for online health monitoring and prognostics (prediction of the remaining life of a component or system) in aerospace applications. The specific areas of need addressed by this project relate to fusion of sensor-based diagnostics with… More

Health monitoring and management of critical machinery is becoming state-of-the-art for military aircraft. Application of advanced health monitoring technology to ground-based plant equipment is an obvious, needed extension. Advanced signal processing algorithms that can analyze vibration signals… More

Topic Synopsis: Current aircraft disposition tools are not designed to take advantage of predictive prognostic information that will be available on new systems such as the F-35 PHM system or the proposed Maintenance and Monitoring system for the E-2D Hawkeye. The central challenges in this topic… More

Wind energy has numerous benefits as a power source, including price stability, lack of greenhouse gas emissions, and lack of dependence on imported fuels. As wind increases its penetration into the U.S. power market, it is imperative to minimize costs and maximize reliability, so that it can fully… More

This proposal addresses the integration of physics-based damage propagation models with diagnostic measures of current state of health in a mathematically rigorous method for the determination of remaining useful life. The principle goal of the proposed Phase I research is the investigation of… More

Gear tooth surface fatigue (pitting) is common precursor failure mode that leads to excessive gear vibration, liberation of debris particles that damage ancillary components (e.g. bearings), and serves as crack initiation sites that lead to eventual catastrophic tooth failure. Current gearbox life… More

Sentient will develop an enhanced prediction of gear tooth surface fatigue life with rigorous analysis of the tribological phenomena that contribute to pitting failure. Advanced mixed-elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) models that are capable of fully describing the tribology of the mating gear… More

Current life prediction methods, such as AGMA, are empirical-based, deterministic in nature and cannot consider the effects of gear manufacturing processes, material microstructure and lubrication on fatigue strength. The estimated life is as good as the information entered by the user and it… More

The Arnold Engineering Development Center has witnessed vibration anomalies on facility equipment that have raised concerns about possible catastrophic or costly failures. In response, AEDC is seeking an advanced, comprehensive condition monitoring system to provide accurate and timely health… More

Sentient will adapt its existing prognostics and health management software and architecture, called SAGE, to Navy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). SAGE is particularly well-suited for UAVs because it already incorporates a centralized architecture, where data storage, signal processing, data… More

Sentient will develop enhanced fretting fatigue analysis software with rigorous consideration of surface roughness effects in the stick/slip phenomena and fatigue. This will be coupled with an analysis of the stresses and resulting degradation in the material. Sentient will utilize diagnostic data… More

Gear tooth surface fatigue (pitting) is common precursor failure mode that leads to excessive gear vibration, liberation of debris particles that damage ancillary components (e.g. bearings), and serves as crack initiation sites that lead to eventual catastrophic tooth failure. Current gearbox life… More

Under this STTR, Sentient Corporation, along with the Ohio State University GearLab as a research partner, will develop a probabilistic physics-based damage modeling tool for the simulation of superfinished gear components. This model will consider critical surface, material, and load parameters for… More

Sentient will develop enhanced fretting fatigue analysis software with rigorous consideration of surface roughness effects in the stick/slip phenomena and fatigue. This will be coupled with an analysis of the stresses and resulting degradation in the material. Sentient will utilize diagnostic data… More

Sentient will develop a unique and innovative prognostics and health management architecture, called SAGEmaintainer for Navy unmanned aerial system (UAS). SAGEmaintainer is a three part solution for PHM on unmanned systems. First is the PHM open architecture system does not rely on pilot feedback,… More

Under this effort, Sentient will develop mixed-EHL models to predict the performance of fluid film bearings for submarine applications. The models will consider critical design and operational parameters such as component geometry and surface finish, start up and shut down speeds/loads, and… More

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project shall develop analytical fatigue models as applied to the performance analysis of remanufactured gearbox coponents under NSF SBIR Phase I Solicitation 11-577 (Topic NM?Nanotechnology, Advanced Materials, and Manufacturing, Subtopic M3-Modeling… More

The overall goal of this project is to develop an optimized surface texture process in order to maximize the efficiency of rolling/sliding contacts such as gears. Development of this high efficiency, rolling/sliding surface will be guided by Sentient's unique combination of modeling… More

Gearbox seal wear and leakage is a major source of maintenance and downtime for rotorcraft. Sentient will use our advanced tribology modeling technology to evaluate coatings and surface texturing processes for carbon face seals and provide a generalized modeling approach that can replace physical… More

Sentient will be developing a Smart DigitalClone Sensor for application to rotorcraft drivetrains and other rotating components on high value systems. This technology is enabled by our DigitalClone Ground Truth model, developed through Navy and Army SBIR funding and validated with multiple OEM… More

Current gearbox life estimation techniques commonly underplay the significance of gear tooth surface fatigue due to the complexity of the phenomenon involved. The Phase I program successfully demonstrated the feasibility of utilizing advanced modeling techniques to predict the onset and propagation… More