Fusion Prognostics

Prognostics is a method that permits the assessment of product reliability under its actual application conditions. While there are various methods to perform prognostics, including physics of failure and data-driven methods, these methods have some key disadvantages. This paper presents a fusion prognostics approach, which combines or “fuses together” the physicsof-failure and data-driven methods, to enable increasingly better estimates of remaining useful life. This new approach has advantages for both non-operating and usage conditions because it can utilize environmental loads as well as operating data from the product. The approach also improves the determination of root cause failure mechanisms that cause product failure.