Fault Detection and Prognostics in Aerospace Engineering II

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to the second volume of the Special Issue entitled “Fault Detection and Prognostics in Aerospace Engineering”, which focuses on prognostics, diagnostics, and innovative approaches to fault detection/identification in all sectors of aerospace engineering.

Effective and reliable diagnostic strategies, able to timely identify the incoming failures and neutralize or, at least, mitigate their effects, are essential in aerospace to guarantee a proper fulfillment of safety requirements. These methods are evolving in parallel with the increase in complexity and criticality of onboard systems and, especially in recent decades, have become a fundamental topic that defines the goodness of aerospace projects.

In this regard, in recent years, a new engineering discipline, called Prognostics and Health Management (PHM), has been developed as an innovative strategy to reduce risks associated with the propagation of progressive failures. Briefly, PHM relies on monitoring a system's functional parameters to detect and identify precursors of failures at an early stage to estimate the components Remaining Useful Life (RUL). Furthermore, the information regarding the system's health status may help to better plan maintenance operations and warehouse management. As a result, most necessary maintenance interventions can be scheduled ahead of time instead of being performed as corrective maintenance. Furthermore, the aircraft operating profile could be adapted to slow down the evolution of failures, thereby increasing its availability and lowering operating costs. Finally, a reliable prognostic strategy supporting the aircraft maintenance activity would lead to more straightforward troubleshooting tasks, reducing the vehicle downtime and mitigating the risks associated with the human factor in fault identification.

These are considered cutting-edge topics in the scientific community and attract growing interest in various industrial sectors (aerospace, automotive, automation, railways, defense, and more). Therefore, we believe that a collection of selected works providing an overview of state-of-the-art research and highlighting the most recent and promising studies could be received with interest by the technical–scientific community.

To provide a thematic focus between the different application areas, this Special Issue aims to collect original research on innovative methods to address system engineering problems such as:

• Aerospace actuators;
• Aircraft flight control system;
• Complex aerospace systems;
• Diagnostics;
• Dynamic simulation of the on-board system;
• Fault detection/evaluation methods;
• Mechatronics;
• Model-based approach diagnostics;
• Modelling techniques;
• Monitoring systems;
• Multi-domain numerical models;
• Nonlinearities;
• Numerical simulation;
• Onboard systems;
• PHM;
• Prognostics;
• Progressive failures;
• Safety;
• Simplified numerical models;
• Systems design/optimization;
• Systems engineering.

Furthermore, the key topics listed above are not intended to exclude articles from related areas. Indeed, we do not want to limit the Special Issue’s focus to only diagnostic and prognostic problems. Instead, we aim to also include significant studies concerning the analysis of the main failure modes affecting aerospace systems, their impact on operations, and the innovative techniques that simulate their effects.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and kindly invite you to contact one of the Guest Editors for further questions.

Dr. Matteo Davide Lorenzo Dalla Vedova
Dr. Pier Carlo Berri
Dr. Gaetano Quattrocchi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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