Probabilistic Fatigue Damage Estimation for Rotorcraft Life-Limited Components

Condition-based maintenance programs for modern helicopters rely on algorithmic techniques to estimate the useful life remaining for life-limited components. Regime-recognition-based condition-based maintenance programs involve a regime recognition step and a damage estimation step in which damage is calculated based on the identified regimes. Recently, new probabilistic regime recognition algorithms have been developed that produce probability distributions over the regimes, rather than deterministic regime classifications. However, to date, there has been no method to convert regime distributions to damage estimates. This paper proposes a technique to compute a probability distribution over the fatigue damage for each life-limited component directly from the regime probability distributions. The method treats the incurred damage at a given time as a random variable and accumulates the total damage incurred as a sum of random variables. The damage distribution at each time is computed from the regime distribution and the regime damage rates. A primary advantage of the approach is that it captures uncertainty in the regime recognition process by treating damage as a random variable rather than a deterministic value. Simulation results illustrate the benefit of the probabilistic approach over a deterministic method, particularly for flights where there is significant uncertainty in the flown regimes.