Air vehicle system health and asset management: modeling, simulation, and decision support

Abstract Effective Asset Management (AM) is essential to achieve operational excellence in the context of large complex Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs). It involves coordinated activities across all life-cycle stages, including information and service exchange within and between adjacent air operations domains, for effective air operations and collaboration. For enterprises and military air operations, AM presuppose information and service exchange between the adjacent domains of air operations. Important aspects of aviation AM are that CPSs include Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM), CPS models, and Digital Twin (DT), as central concepts used to predict and optimize asset performance. This article provides an overview of the aviation AM phenomenology, environment, and challenges, and how they may impact envisioned realisations of effective AM solutions for support to enterprise air vehicle operations. The article serves as an extension of the paper Cyber-physical Asset Management of Air Vehicle Systems presented at the International Congress and Workshop of Industrial AI and Maintenance (Candell et al., in Proceedings of the IAI2023–7th international congress and workshop on industrial AI and eMaintenance, Luleå, Sweden, 2023). A comprehensive approach is presented, comprising interdependent dimensions of the problem domain, and how they may be integrated into a framework and a platform concept addressing aviation AM needs.