Development and Application of a Portable Health Algorithms Test System

This paper describes the development and initial demonstration of a Portable Health Algorithms Test (PHALT) System that is being developed by researchers at the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC). The PHALT System was conceived as a means of evolving the maturity and credibility of algorithms developed to assess the health of aerospace systems. Comprising an integrated hardware-software environment, the PHALT System allows systems health management algorithms to be developed in a graphical programming environment; to be tested and refined using system simulation or test data playback; and finally, to be evaluated in a real-time hardware-in-the-loop mode with a live test article. In this paper, PHALT System development is described through the presentation of a functional architecture, followed by the selection and integration of hardware and software. Also described is an initial real-time hardware-in-the-loop demonstration that used sensor data qualification algorithms to diagnose and isolate simulated sensor failures in a prototype Power Distribution Unit test-bed. Success of the initial demonstration is highlighted by the correct detection of all sensor failures and the absence of any real-time constraint violations.