The Prognostics Framework is a set of software tools with an open architecture that affords a capability to integrate various prognostic software mechanisms and to provide information for operational and battlefield decision-making and logistical planning pertaining to weapon systems. The Prognostics Framework is also a system-level "health"-management software system that (1) receives data from performance-monitoring and builtin-test sensors and from other prognostic software and (2) processes the received data to derive a diagnosis and a prognosis for a weapon system. This software relates the diagnostic and prognostic information to the overall health of the system, to the ability of the system to perform specific missions, and to needed maintenance actions and maintenance resources. In the development of the Prognostics Framework, effort was focused primarily on extending previously developed model-based diagnostic-reasoning software to add prognostic reasoning capabilities, including capabilities to perform statistical analyses and to utilize information pertaining to deterioration of parts, failure modes, time sensitivity of measured values, mission criticality, historical data, and trends in measurement data. As thus extended, the software offers an overall healthmonitoring capability.

This program was written by Mary Nolan, Rebecca Catania, and Gregory deMare of Giordano Automation Corp. for Marshall Space Flight Center. For further information, access the Technical Support Package (TSP) free on-line at www.techbriefs.com/tsp under the Software category.

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