Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The long-term objectives of this research program are to develop novel methods and techniques used for system monitoring, fault detection and failure prediction to enable efficient maintenance and decision-making through onboard monitoring. The short-term research objectives will focus on timely detection of damage to high temperature thermal barrier coated components while defects are still at their incipient stage. Although vibrations measurement for machine health monitoring is well-accepted, application to lifetime monitoring for thermal barrier coatings is novel, unproven and forms the basis of the short-term research goals of this program. If successful, the application of vibrations measurement to monitoring thermal barrier coating coating health would likely see ready adoption by industry. Building on a track record of recent technical accomplishments, we expect significant knowledge advancement and technology innovations in modelling, monitoring, signal processing methods, fault detection and failure prediction. Canadian industry will benefit from improved models and methodologies for sensing and feature extraction for system monitoring and detection of faults. This in turn enables coherent and responsive decision-making for monitoring techniques for in-process failure avoidance. The results of this research program will result in reduced downtime and increased efficiency and safety, thus boosting the competitiveness of Canadian companies and improving the social and economic wellbeing of Canadians. HQP will be trained in advanced thermomechanical modelling approaches, compressed spectral model generation, signal acquisition, processing and information extraction for intelligent, data-informed decision making. HQP will gain key technical skills, as well as professional skills such as communication, data-based decision making, and collaboration. These skills will equip trainees to contribute to the competitiveness of the Canadian economy.