Could the Implementation of Smart Systems Transform Military Vehicle Maintenance?

As shifting theater requirements and increasingly harsh budget realities continue to influence the roles of US tactical military vehicles, it is becoming increasingly essential for vehicles to maximize their longevity and effectiveness. One way for that maximization to occur is to develop systems that don’t merely report when a vehicle has a maintenance issue, but to predict when those issues might occur and prevent them. [eventPDF] Extensive research is currently being done in this area by Dr. Jay Lee, Director, NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center on Intelligent Maintenance Systems (IMS) for the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Lee’s work focuses on designing smart prognostics with the ability to predict maintenance issues that might arise in military vehicles. The systems Dr. Lee is working on "can predict potential failures," he said. "If you look at major military defense vehicles and equipment, they aren’t able to do that." He noted that even those vehicles that are equipped with smart sensors don’t yet have these kinds of prognostic abilities. According to Dr. Lee, the primary question that needs to be addressed is how to predict the degradation of a system, including potential degradation of the sensors themselves. "The traditional approach is to detect when there’s a problem, and react then—we say predict and prevent," he said. "Maybe the system isn’t working, or the sensor itself is degrading. With our approach, eventually you can predict the ‘health’ drop, and monitor how ‘healthy’ the component is." According to Dr. Lee, the shift away from reactive maintenance to this kind of proactive approach has the potential to generate tremendous cost savings, as well as bring vehicle and equipment performance to near-zero breakdown status. The key, he said, is to collect as many data points as possible, which comes from two primary sources: sensors mounted on equipment to gather the relevant information, combined with appropriate history and trending information. According to Dr. Lee, by synthesizing these data streams future performance can be predicted, creating an Intelligent Maintenance System that will detect potential issues before then happen. After the data is collected, he said, it has to be properly stored in order to perform predictive modeling processes. Dr. Lee stresses the importance of efficiency in this process. "Because we’re in Ohio, that’s the approach we take—OHIO," he said. "It stands for ‘Only Handle Information Once." The last challenge, said Dr. Lee, is being able to take the enormous volume of data available on vehicles "and convert it to something useful, convert it to information, and be able to link it to different users." By way of analogy, he noted that if a doctor takes blood from blood from a patient, then there is a wide range of testing and data analysis that can performed. "Blood is like data" he said. "So from that, there can be a cholesterol test, a diabetes test, an HIV test, and so on. "That is how we would perform and analyze maintenance tests on vehicles—if we have a system in place, we can massage the data in many different ways. This is important, because different users have to know different things." Dr. Jay Lee is Director NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center on Intelligent Maintenance Systems (IMS), for the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Lee will be speaking at IDGA’s 5thAnnual Tactical Vehicles Summit, to be held from April 23-25, 2012 in Washington, DC. For more information on the event, visit www.TacticalVehiclesSummit.com or call 1-800-882-8684.

Could the Implementation of Smart Systems Transform Military Vehicle Maintenance?

Upcoming Events

Wildfire Technology Summit

Air Dominance Summit

Next Generation UAS

Armored Vehicles USA Conference

Veterans Healthcare 2026

Counter UAS Summit

Follow Us

Latest Webinars

Responsible and Transparent Approaches to AI in Biometric Algorithm

Securing the Defence Industrial Base: Mitigating Risk and Delivering Resiliency in Physical and Digital Supply Chains

Treatment Option for Two Subsets of Challenging to Treat Major Depressive Disorder in Adults

Recommended

Facial Recognition: Art or Science?

Facial Recognition: Art or Science?

NORAD’s Perspective on Radar: Interview with Lieutenant General Pierre St-Amand...

OBIM's View On Biometrics

Controlling the Waters Biometric Security at Port Everglades

Trump and Tricare: How will the new administration affect Military Healthcare?

Trump and Tricare: How will the new administration affect Military Healthcare?

How Will the New Administration Affect Military Healthcare?

Unmanned Solutions for Ground Combat Systems: with Johns Hopkins University

CERDEC On Energy Storage Solutions

The Future of Biometric Technology With U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services...

Military Healthcare: Presentation Case Study

FIND CONTENT BY TYPE

IDGA COMMUNITY

ADVERTISE WITH US

JOIN THE IDGA COMMUNITY

Could the Implementation of Smart Systems Transform Military Vehicle Maintenance?

Upcoming Events

Follow Us

Subscribe to our Free Newsletter

Latest Webinars

Recommended

FIND CONTENT BY TYPE

IDGA COMMUNITY

ADVERTISE WITH US

JOIN THE IDGA COMMUNITY