Hydraulic machinery

Physics

Hydraulic fluid

Mathematics

Hydraulic pump

Operating system

Optics

Distribution (mathematics)

Engineering

Inverse Gaussian distribution

Wavefront

Mathematical analysis

Plunger pump

Power (physics)

Piston (optics)

Reliability engineering

Electronic engineering

Degradation (telecommunications)

Plunger

Computer science

Quantum mechanics

Process (computing)

Reliability (semiconductor)

Hydraulic cylinder

Mechanical engineering

Piston pump

Quality and Reliability Engineering International

As a key aircraft component, hydraulic piston pumps must be developed with high reliability. However, collecting failure time data of such pumps for reliability analysis is a big challenge. To save testing time, performance degradation data obtained from degradation tests can be used for quick reliability estimation of hydraulic piston pumps. This paper proposes an engineering‐driven performance degradation analysis method considering the nature of mechanical wear of hydraulic piston pumps. First, the failure mechanism of a type of hydraulic piston pump is investigated. By taking into account the close relationship between the degradation rate and the failure mechanism, an inverse Gaussian (IG) process model with a variable rate is developed to describe the degradation behavior of the pump. Under this model, a Bayesian statistical method is developed for degradation data analysis. The corresponding procedure for model parameter estimation and reliability evaluation is also presented. The proposed degradation analysis method is illustrated using a real experimental data. The results show that the engineering‐driven approach is quite effective in evaluating the lifetime of the hydraulic piston pump and will improve the overall reliability of aircraft operation in the field.

Engineering‐driven performance degradation analysis of hydraulic piston pump based on the inverse Gaussian process