Prognostic Health Management and Additive Manufacturing Quality Analysis of Cables

Abstract

Electrical systems regarding the transmittance of signals and data are under the constant threat of wear and tear. Many machines and systems that use cables to transfer signals and data are often used right up until failure before anything is done in terms of maintenance or installing preventative measures against failure. The research conducted in this thesis is a twofold, first doing extensive research into the identification and modeling of coaxial cable damage from accelerated damage testing and constructing preventative measures to stop electrocardiogram cables from experiencing environmental damage. Prognostic health management (PHM) techniques are vital to understanding when a system is in need of maintenance as PHM can predict when the system is no longer functioning at a satisfactory level. There are three different methods conducted in this research to identify the damage being accrued to a coaxial cable using both standard laboratory equipment such as waveform generators and oscilloscopes as well as more specialized equipment such as a vector network analyzer for more detailed data. Electrocardiogram (ECG) cables, which are critical for patient monitoring systems, undergo rigorous use which threatens the integrity and durability under various operational conditions. There is also the issue of additional cables, tubes, and other leads becoming entangled resulting in operational difficulties. The second chapter follows the development of a retractable cable housing specifically for a five-lead ECG cable using additive manufacturing methods to create the protective housing. Additionally, additively manufactured traces on specialized conductive printing platforms was proposed as a replacement to the standard wiring to decrease the profile of cable housing unit.