Research Associate for Prognostics and Health Management under Uncertainty

Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) serves as an umbrella term for a variety of techniques that monitor the health of systems and components, providing insightful projections about their future operations and potential malfunctions. In the aviation industry, these can pose significant risks to both the aircraft and its passengers, and unscheduled maintenance can create substantial and costly disruptions, thereby accentuating the necessity for an effective PHM. A robust PHM system is advantageous as it permits maintenance teams to address potential problems preemptively, preventing them from becoming critical. Furthermore, it can discern instances where scheduled maintenance is redundant, facilitating the optimization of maintenance schedules. This not only aids in cost reduction but also improves the operational efficiency of components, systems, and entire aircraft throughout their life cycles.

However, while incorporating PHM models in safety-critical systems that necessitate high reliability, comprehensive scrutiny of uncertainties becomes imperative. These uncertainties, which can originate from various sources such as measurement inaccuracies, modeling presumptions, and environmental factors, must be carefully addressed with appropriate mathematical models and engineering methods.

Your responsibilities will be:

• independently develop a comprehensive, system-agnostic framework for Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) in PHM, using aircraft engines for testing and validation
• seamlessly integrate this UQ framework into the existing institute’s lifecycle simulation models, considering degradation and deterioration interactions in multi-component systems
• discover and employ optimal mathematical models and algorithms to manage uncertainties and predict system behaviors
• utilize the UQ framework and developed algorithms to optimize maintenance scheduling models, promoting predictive maintenance practices
• collaborate with a team to ensure project success and to facilitate the widespread adoption of PHM in the aviation industry and beyond
• regularly report on project progress and results to both internal and external stakeholders, demonstrating the practicality and efficiency of the UQ framework in aviation

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