A METHOD FOR ESTIMATING THE NEED FOR MAINTENANCE OF A COMPONENT

The present disclosure relates to a method for determining one or more reference levels corresponding to the maintenance condition of a component of machinery, such as a vehicle, comprising the steps of: a) providing predefined physical limits for i) an intact level corresponding to a physical limit below which the component is assumed to be functional; and ii) a broken level corresponding to a physical limit above which the component is assumed to be broken; b) acquiring monitoring data parameters in a time period (indicative of movement, acceleration and/or angular orientation of the component and/or the vehicle) corresponding to physical impact and/or stress of the component and calculating the physical condition of the component based on the data parameters; c) evaluating the physical condition of the component after said time period, and updating the intact level to the calculated physical condition if the component is intact and the calculated physical condition exceeds the intact level; or updating the broken level to the calculated condition if the component is broken and the calculated physical condition is below the broken level. The disclosure further relates to a method for predicting the need for maintenance of machinery, such as a vehicle or a fleet of vehicles, comprising the steps of: providing monitoring data parameters acquired over a time period corresponding to physical impact and/or stress of one or more components of said machinery and calculating the physical condition of said component(s) based on the data parameters; providing at least two reference levels of said components of said machinery thereby obtaining at least an intact level and a broken level of each component, comparing the physical condition of each component with the corresponding intact level and broken level of said component, and predicting the need for maintenance of the machinery by determining the intactness of each component. La présente invention concerne un procédé pour déterminer un ou plusieurs niveaux de référence correspondant à la condition de maintenance d'un élément de machinerie, tel qu'un véhicule, consistant à : a) fournir des limites physiques prédéfinies pour i) un niveau intact correspondant à une limite physique au-dessous de laquelle l'élément est supposé être fonctionnel ; et ii) un niveau cassé correspondant à une limite physique au-dessus de laquelle l'élément est supposé être cassé ; b) acquérir des paramètres de données de surveillance dan