Executive Summary : | Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) has been gaining widespread acceptance in the industry. The future technology that is expected to impact the way critical assets are managed is Health and Usage Monitoring System (HUMS) that takes CBM to the next level harnessing all aspects of condition monitoring, fault diagnosis, asset usage management, and maintenance. The main motivation of the present proposal lies in identification by Army Design Bureau of the Automated Equipment Health monitoring system as the potential problem that needs technology infusion and is poorly solved. The HUMS technology is complex and needs interdisciplinary research involving a detailed understanding of the target system and processes. The present proposal is perfectly in line with the immediate need of the Indian defense sector. Although a few systems claim to have condition monitoring technology, none are in a position to offer the HUMS technology. There is no readymade available solution. Since the economic benefits of the implementation of HUMS are significant, with allied tangible and non-tangible benefits, future is in early design and development of such a system. Indigenous development of such a technology for the Indian defense unit will always be of immense value from the national security viewpoint. This project involves the development of an integrated framework to implement a HUMS and a working prototype on army armored vehicles. The critical asset chosen for the armored vehicle (the main battle tank) is the gearbox. Since the mechanical powering system of radar system involves a gearbox, a Tactical Control Radar equipment (variant of the Rohini Radars) is included in the study. These radars operate 24x7 and are critical to the defense. The technology development of the HUMS involves understanding the operation of all the subsystems of the asset, the influence of operating parameters, development of appropriate technology for assessing the equipment condition using sensors and processing of raw sensor data, correlating the data with operating parameters and decision making. The logging of the usage related parameters, maintaining the systematic data and events, devising structured storage of knowledge and historical data will be the part of proposed work. This will help improve the decision-making process and more accurate prediction of the asset health. The project is formulated in partnership with one of the key defense sector manufacturers, L&T Defence, Mumbai. The end user is Indian Army and the Patiala Army Camp is keen in participating in the proposed research and development activity. The developed HUMS will be useful for the Indian Army in ensuring operational readiness and availability of fleets of mission-critical assets, such as tanks and radars. Systematic monitoring of the health and usage of the assets through the development of state-of-the-art technology is expected to have a significant impact on the optimum fleet management. |