Innovative predictive maintenance concepts to improve life cycle management

For naval systems with typically long service lives, high sustainment costs and strict availability requirements, an effective and efficient life cycle management process is very important. In this paper four approaches are discussed to improve that process: physics of failure based predictive maintenance, advanced data analysis, condition based maintenance and maintenance optimization. For all these approaches, understanding of the failure behaviour and quantifying the effects of variations in usage of the system appear to be the key factor for improvements

Cultural practice of the Midzichenda at cross roads:: Divination, healing, witchcraft and the statutory law

This paper discusses the conflicts between some cultural practices of the Midzichenda (i. e. divination, healing and witchcraft) and the Kenyan Law. For decades, diviners and healers have been misconceived and condemned wholesale as `witchdoctors´, `wizards´ or `witches´. This misconception has seen many innocent diviners and healers mercilessly arrested, hurriedly arraigned in court, heavily fined and (or) eventually imprisoned, and their paraphernalia confiscated and finally destroyed by the state. The paper calls for proper understanding of the intricate belief in and practise of divination and healing vis-a-vis witchcraft and proposes ways which could help solve the conflicts

Aligning PHM, SHM and CBM by understanding the physical system failure behaviour

In this work the three disciplines of condition based maintenance (CBM), structural health monitoring (SHM) and prognostics and health management (PHM) are described and the characteristics of the disciplines are compared. The three approaches are then demonstrated using three different case studies on bearing vibration monitoring, composite panel structural health monitoring and helicopter landing gear prognostics, respectively. After a discussion on the benefits of understanding the system (failure) behaviour, an integrated approach is proposed in\ud which the three disciplines are aligned. This approach starts from defining an appropriate monitoring strategy and eventually leads to decision support in taking the decisions that lead to an optimal maintenance process throughout the life cycle of the asset