From basic research to industrial partnership

PHM Team

PHM Team

PHM : Prognostics and Health Management

The upholding of industrial installations can not be considered as a "source of losses" for companies anymore but rather than a necessary activity in performance research.
Actually, industrial maintenance appears to be both a source and a target of scientific developments which account for many action partnership "industry-research" and for major projects such as "the IMS center" in USA (Industry / University Cooperative Research Center for Intelligent Maintenance System) supported by NSF (National Science Foundation).
As another clue, the IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) has accepted the construction of a new working group within the Technical Committee (TC 5.1, Manufacturing Plant Control - Working Group 4 - Advanced Maintenance Engineering, Services and Technology). At the french national level, the thematics of the MACOD group (modeling and optimization of cooperative and distributed maintenance, which belongs to the working group MACS) also aim at looking for innovative solutions for the development of an efficient industrial maintenance. This is the global framework in which SyMI (Intelligent Maintenance Systems) finds its roots.

More specifically, works in SyMI are focused on the development of systems for maintenance support under the form of web services through a generic e-maintenance platform of industrial mechatronic systems (transport systems, engines, machinery
for production and so on).

Scientific guidelines

SyMI axis aims at providing innovative solutions to both ensure a safe functioning of an equipment and to keep it in operational conditions. SyMI has been developing tools to tackle such problems and efforts are made to solve emerging scientific bolts such as evaluating remaining useful lifetime (RUL), i.e. time before failure of an equipment.
Current developments can be gathered as follows:

SyMI
Diagnostic

The studied diagnostic methods rely on the expertise gained in the field and aim at developing models that, after detecting a problem, allows to point out the faulty components.

Prognostic

Prognosis methods which are developed in the team are mainly "data-oriented". Different and complementary approaches for data / information / knowledge processing and modelling are used in order to take into account the vagueness / imprecision and uncertainty characterizing the available data. Especially, approaches are rely on the use of probability theory (Bayesian networks), fuzzy logic and neural networks (neuro-fuzzy systems) and the theory of belief functions (evidential networks).

Management of material and human resources

These works aim at proposing new methods for decision support in maintenance. The developed tools address the management of material and human resources. They include scheduling and assignment problems that are solved using various approach such as genetic algorithms, branch and bound procedure, ant colony systems, …

Labeled projects

IM@PRO project

The main goal of the project is the industrial prognostic, using ambient intelligent algorithms (Intelligent Maintenance Systems). The main objectives of this French-Singaporean long term collaboration are related to:

  • Initiation of a research bridge between the AS2M department of the FEMTO-ST Institute, Besançon, France and SIMtech, A*STAR using the support of the existing French-Singaporean CNRS-NUS,A*STAR,UJF laboratory IPAL.
  • Creation of a sustainable quadripolar scientific support through an international research-industry partnership formed by AS2M/FEMTO and SIMTech/A*STAR with the support of IPAL for the research component, and ALSTOM (France and Singapore) and DCNS (France and Singapore) for the industrial component.
  • This collaboration may lead to expand and transfer the existing research experience of AS2M/FEMTO-ST, acquired through the several projects, and to reinforce the emergent prognosis research axis in AS2M/FEMTO-ST and SIMTech.
SMAC Project

The SMAC project (S-maintenance and life cycle) is a cross-border project INTERREG IV between the University of Franche-Comté and the Polytechnical Federal School of Lausanne. This project, with a budget of nearly 800 000 Euros, began in September 2008 and will end in 2011. It aims to capitalize knowledge of equipment throughout its lifecycle via a platform of e-maintenance system integrating a knowledge base.

AMIMAC–FAME project

The FAME project (increased reliability of embedded machines) is labeled by the cluster of competitiveness of microtechnologies of the Franche-Comté region. This project began in 2007 and will end in 2010. It is headed by Alstom Transport company and includes a partnership with the Cegelec SA company. This project aims at:

PROTEUS project

The Proteus project was carried out within Eureka-ITEA framework (Information Technology for European Advancement). Driven by CEGELEC company from 2002 to 2005, this project aimed at developing an e-maintenance platform. It included German and French and Belgian partners with a total budget of 14 million euros.

Partnership research

Research works within SyMI axis are largely supported and funded by the involvement of staff members in collaborative projects oriented towards industrial maintenance. Five projects have been or are being developed.

DINAMIC project

The DINAMIC project focuses on the increased availability and minimization of maintenance costs of locomotives manufactured by Alstom Transportation - Belfort. This project, with a budget amounting to 45 000 Euros, began in 2008 for a period of 3 years (until 2010).

  • improving the reliability and robustness of embedded electrical machines from the knowledge management and feedback,
  • establishing a model of predictive reliability on these machines,
  • developing solutions of predictive maintenance that allow to improve the maintainability of electrical embedded machines
  • getting more information on the real conditions of the machines running in one customer
  • establishing a demonstrator platform for e-diagnosis
Nemosys® project

The Nemosys project was conducted in partnership with DCNS company from 2005 to 2007.
A consortium of laboratories issued from the working group MACOD (GdR MACS) carried out
the study of the definition of a solution of e-maintenance system adapted to a naval
system:

  • Organization and development of a training program on the models, methods and tools used in e-maintenance.
  • Setting up of a module for scientific monitoring (Nemoscience) to collect information concerning tools and methods to solve problems of maintenance of vessels.
  • Development of a solution of e-maintenance for ships in partnership with the Predict company.
  • Organization and development of a training program on the models, methods and tools used in e-maintenance.
  • Setting up of a module for scientific monitoring (Nemoscience) to collect information concerning tools and methods to solve problems of maintenance of vessels.
  • Development of a solution of e-maintenance for ships in partnership with the Predict company.
e-m@systec

Since 2009, the COSMI team works in collaboration with e-m@systec company. In this context, two industrial axis are explored. The first one deals with the failure diagnosis, where a case based reasoning approach is adapted for industrial maintenance. In the second one, the goal is to develop a neurofuzzy network system for the prognostic process. In both cases, the main purpose is to propose solutions that meet industrial context requirements.

Experimental platforms

Pronostia

A platform dedicated to the bearing failure prognostic

Pronostia poster

Pronostia is a part of the researches of the PHM team (Pronostics and Health Management). Its purpose is the test and the validation of prognostic failures approaches for industrial components, namely bearings.
The main objective is to provide Pronostia actual experimental data of degradation characteristics of the bearing studied throughout its useful life.
Then these data can be an entry point in the prognostic process; the aim is to estimate at any moment the current state of the bearing, to predict its future state and assess its remaining life time to failure.

E-maintenance platform

The team has developed a platform for e-maintenance, which was originally developed within the European project PROTEUS. This platform has been one of the building blocks to be the winner of the national competition for aid in innovative echnology company creation and is the source of the industrial platform called Em@web (of society e-m@systec).

The software platform called Generic Asset Maintenance Framework (GAMa-Frame) can be seen as a toolbox to deploy custom solutions for e-maintenance. The platform GAMA-Frame is used:

  • To validate and enhance the research on the Supervised Industrial System of pallets Tranfer called SISTRE: the associated demonstrator is called GAMa-SISTRE,
  • To provide e-solutions for specific maintenance projects, such as the FAME project for which has been deployed a platform of e-expertise called GAMA-FAME,
  • To ensure the traceability of information deployed throughout the life
    cycle of and equipment and more particularly during the middle of its life cycle.
    This evolution of the platform is developed in the SMAC project.
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