Tactical missiles within the United States (US) Army are regularly subjected to severe stresses such as long‐term exposure in harsh environments and transportation handling. These stresses factor into the aging, deterioration, and eventual decommissioning of some of the Army's critical warfighting assets. The negative reliability impacts associated with long‐term aging and deterioration significantly affect the total lifecycle cost of fielding these weapons in a high state of readiness.
Reliability evaluation of past data has indicated failures in missile structural, energetic, and electronic components associated with the long‐term exposure to heat, humidity, and transportation shocks. Unlike strategic missiles, tactical missiles undergo a minimum of field checks and non‐destructive evaluation on a routine basis.
The US Army Aviation and Missile Research and Development and Engineering Center has been developing a health monitoring system called Remote Readiness Asset Prognostics and Diagnostics System (RRAPDS) to assess and improve reliability of the missiles during storage and field exposures (Marotta, 2004). RRAPDS will use external and internal sensors to provide data to assess missile conditions and predict reliability.
This chapter describes a systems approach to predict reliability of missile components like propellant, nozzles, and thermal batteries using sensor data from RRAPDS, and describes prognostic models for structural integrity and damage mechanisms. Probabilistic models will quantify all the uncertainties present in the health monitoring data and finite element models, to provide a realistic reliability evaluation.
Tactical Missile Health Management
System Health Management ; 555-564
2011-07-15
10 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
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