In this blog post, we will look at how PHM technology, which predicts and prevents machine system failures, will change the future of mechanical engineering.
A long time ago, there was a terrible accident in downtown Seoul, South Korea. A bus suddenly exploded while in operation, seriously injuring 17 people, including the driver and passengers. What is even more tragic is that many buses in Seoul are of the same model as the one involved in the accident, making them nothing less than “time bombs on wheels.” The cause of the accident was found to be poor maintenance and inspection of the bus, but the Seoul Metropolitan Government has yet to come up with any clear improvement measures. Is there any effective technology that can prevent such accidents? The field of mechanical engineering known as PHM may be the solution to this problem.
Mechanical engineering is a discipline that forms the foundation of industry and deals with the technologies necessary for designing, processing, producing, and automating mechanical systems. In simple terms, it deals with the overall technology of mechanical systems such as airplanes. PHM, a subfield of mechanical engineering, stands for “prognostic and health management.” It is a technology that detects signs of machine system failure at an early stage and prevents failure by making appropriate decisions and taking effective initial measures.
At first glance, prevention and health management may seem to belong to the field of medicine. In fact, the concept of PHM is very similar to that of preventive medicine. General medicine basically treats diseases when they appear. However, preventive medicine goes one step further than treating diseases and aims to maintain human health by preventing the onset of diseases. If we think of mechanical systems in PHM as humans, the role of PHM is the same as that of preventive medicine. PHM prevents machine systems from breaking down before they do, thereby maintaining the system in a healthy state. Just as it is important to understand the human body in order to prevent disease, it is also important to understand machine systems in PHM. In order to understand machine systems, it is important to understand the forces acting on the system, which is why PHM is based on mechanics. Statistics are also used to predict the future state of a system based on information about its current state.
There are many advantages to introducing PHM technology, which prevents system failures based on mechanics and statistics, into a system. The first advantage is cost reduction. PHM maintains and manages systems according to their status. This enables optimized management based on the status of the system, thereby reducing system maintenance costs. Consider, for example, the use of PHM to manage the health of a car’s engine oil. PHM detects the condition of the engine oil in real time, predicts its future condition, and determines when it needs to be replaced, so that the engine oil can be replaced at the right time. This reduces the costs associated with replacing the engine oil too early or too late.
The second advantage is safety. Safety is extremely important in mechanical systems. The city bus explosion mentioned above was caused by a failure to ensure the safety of the machine system. If PHM technology had been introduced in the CNG fuel tanks, which were found to be the cause of the bus explosion, the accident could have been prevented. PHM could have prevented the accident by predicting the possibility of fuel explosion based on information such as the temperature and pressure of the fuel tanks and automatically lowering the fuel temperature or stopping the bus. PHM is superior in terms of safety because it is difficult to predict the possibility of accidents in real-time driving situations with conventional regular inspections. In addition to these advantages, PHM has many other advantages, such as reducing the failure rate of mechanical systems, increasing product sales costs, and improving system reliability.
Recognizing the necessity of PHM technology, advanced countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom are already actively conducting research in this field, which is attracting attention as a growth area in the future. However, PHM research in Korea is still inadequate. There is a lack of universities and human resources conducting PHM research, and it is still considered an unfamiliar field of study even among mechanical engineering majors in Korea. Nevertheless, the demand for PHM technology in Korea is expected to increase. In Korea, the number of mechanical systems has increased rapidly over the past 50 years due to rapid industrial development. As the industry is entering a period of maturity after rapid development, it is now more important to maintain and manage existing systems than to develop new ones. Accordingly, the market for PHM, which manages mechanical systems, will continue to grow. The future of PHM research in Korea will be closely watched.
