Diagnosis of thruster fault condition using statistical design of experiment

Present study consists the diagnosis of thruster fault condition using statistical design of experiment. Fault in thruster can cause deviation in process parameter, i. e. current load which could interfere with the propulsion system and overall system operation. The faulty conditions are demonstrated by blocked ducting. Variations of current load due to several conditions e. g. normal and faulty are studied using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and factorial design. Two-Factor factorial design is used to analyze the means in each factor. The two factors are the armature voltage and thruster condition. Tukey's method is used to test all pair wise means in a single factor i. e. thruster condition in order to confirm the significant variation for each condition. Result from the experiment shows that the null hypothesis H₀ for both Two-Factor factorial design and Tukey's test are rejected and the alternate hypothesis H₁ is accepted. This indicates that the current loads for each pair are varying and all means in thruster condition factor are significantly different.