What is Integrated Vehicle Health Management?

Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) refers to an all-inclusive integrated solution encompassing the application of different disciplines such as diagnostics and prognostics to locate sporadic faults and irregularities within complex vehicle systems. The application of IVHM tools to automotive repair and maintenance use cases that tend to eliminate needless repairs and costs by 50 percent while enhancing planned vehicle maintenance and logistics.

IVHM methods enable better management of individual vehicle and fleet health thanks to:

•        The ability to fix faults before they actually occur.

•        Improved vehicle utilization through better maintenance scheduling.

•        Enhanced vehicle or fleet reliability through a more thorough understanding of the real-time health of the system and prognosis based maintenance.

•        Reduced unnecessary and unscheduled maintenance.

Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) includes a set of tools, technologies and techniques for automated finding, diagnosis and prediction of faults to support platforms more competently. Certain challenges are encountered when IVHM tools are to be retrofitted into bequest vehicles since major modifications are much more challenging than with platforms whose design can still be enhanced. The topics covered in this Review Paper include the modern IVHM tools and how their features match the needs of legacy aircraft, a summary of problems present in the past trying to retrofit IVHM tools both from a technical and administrative perspective and the existing level of implementation of IVHM in industry. Although the technology has not attained the level required to implement IVHM to its ultimate potential on every kind of module, major progress has been achieved on rotating equipment, structures or electronics.

Efforts to retrofit some of these tools in the past encountered both technical complexities and opposition by some stakeholders, the later being liable for the let-down of technically advanced projects in various occasions. In addition, despite these problems, products and services based on IVHM technology have begun to be presented by the manufacturers and, what is more necessary, required by the operators, giving support on what the industry would demand from IVHM on legacy aircraft.

New standards address vehicle health management; particularly, the development of integrated systems for monitoring all elements of vehicle health, including structural, propulsion, and electronics. This advanced effort will branch out into other areas of the vehicle such as electronics, and develop standards for integrating all aspects of vehicle health into one integrated health management system. The result should lead to reduced maintenance costs, less time out of service, and more consistent vehicle performance.