Technology Maturation of Integrated System Health Management

Despite two decades of significant investments in R&D of Integrated System Health Management (ISHM), mission-critical applications of it in aerospace are few and far between. ISHM is subject to the general difficulty of transitioning technologies out of R&D labs and into practical applications. New and unproven methods such as ISHM introduce multiple mission risks (technology, schedule, cost), and may require a transition to unconventional and as-yet-unproven operations concepts in order to be effective. Laboratory and flight demonstrations are necessary but insufficient to adequately reduce those risks. What is needed is a solid business case before a new technology can be considered for fleetwide deployment. To address these problems, we recently applied a technology maturation assessment process developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to study the challenges of ISHM technology maturation. This application resulted in identification of the technologies (and technology maturation activities) that would result in the greatest risk reduction per investment dollar. Our approach and its results are described herein.