Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

This site is currently in beta, and your feedback is helping shape its ongoing development.

Prognostics Design Solutions in Structural Health Monitoring Systems

Published by Dashlink | National Aeronautics and Space Administration | Metadata Last Checked: October 06, 2025 | Last Modified: 2025-03-31
The chapter describes the application of prognostic techniques to the domain of structural health and demonstrates the efficacy of the methods using fatigue data from a graphite-epoxy composite coupon. Prognostics denotes the in-situ assessment of the health of a component and the repeated estimation of remaining life, conditional on anticipated future usage. The methods shown here use a physics-based modeling approach whereby the behavior of the damaged components is encapsulated via mathematical equations that describe the characteristics of the components as it experiences increasing degrees of degradation. Mathematical rigorous techniques are used to extrapolate the remaining life to a failure threshold. Additionally, mathematical tools are used to calculate the uncertainty associated with making predictions. The information stemming from the predictions can be used in an operational context for go/no go decisions, quantify risk of ability to complete a (set of) mission or operation, and when to schedule maintenance.

Find Related Datasets

Click any tag below to search for similar datasets

data.gov

An official website of the GSA's Technology Transformation Services

Looking for U.S. government information and services?
Visit USA.gov