Prognostics and Health Management

Series Editor's Foreword

As quality and reliability science evolves, it reflects the trends and transformations of the technologies it supports. A device utilizing a new technology, whether it be a solar power panel, a stealth aircraft, or a state‐of‐the‐art medical device, needs to function properly and without failure throughout its mission life.

In addition to addressing the reliability of new technology, the field of quality and reliability engineering has been going through its own evolution, developing new techniques and methodologies aimed at process improvement and reduction in the number of design‐ and manufacturing‐related failures. One of these disciplines is prognostics and health management/monitoring (PHM), a fast‐growing field intended to ensure safety and provide the state of health and estimate remaining useful life (RUL) of components and systems. PHM injects a more proactive approach into system reliability, where application of physics of failure (PoF), degradation analysis, and modern algorithms allow the prediction of failure time and, consequently, the ability to take actions preventing failures from happening.

The advancement and growing application of functional safety standards, along with the fast development of autonomous vehicles, increases the pressure to achieve exceptionally high system reliability, thus making PHM an indispensable tool to meet these expectations.

PHM can provide many advantages to users and maintainers, including financial benefits ...