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The state of the art in advanced condition monitoring of aerospace systems continues to make significant strides, fueled by revolutionary new technologies in micro-sensing, optical methods, as well as software driven diagnostic techniques. Demand for better health monitoring solutions also continuous to grow, along with the increasing complexity of systems. The life cycle cost of these solutions must be considered carefully to provide an optimal design. The challenge to the system designer is to understand the requirements of the system and the associated risks, in order to properly match the monitoring solutions to the mission-driven need. This paper focuses on a methodology for thorough risk assessment of the target system, derived from top-level requirements, as the rational basis for selection and design of condition monitoring subsystems. The payoffs include an effective monitoring subsystem design and a proper trade-off between life-cycle cost and risk.

The use of an on-board microprocessor to acquire data on truck and bus performance during in-service operation enables the information transmitted by measurement sensors to be examined, processed, compacted or aggregated, and stored in memory by the on-board computer software. The system development requires a careful balance of the tradeoffs between hardware and software concepts which is quite different from considerations applied with normal “laboratory” type data acquisition systems.