by galvedro » Mon May 05, 2014 7:42 am
The way I was thinking about it is this: The current implementation can fail systems on command, by clicking in the checkbox via GUI or prop tree, or by setting an MTBF/MCBF value. The system will go from "perfect condition" to "failed" instantaneously when the time comes.
The new implementation (in the works) replaces MTBF/MCBF with a trigger system that is more generic. It will be possible to fail a system at a certain altitude or at a certain location, for example. But it will still be a binary condition for now (failed / not failed).
One way to introduce wear I think is to replace the trigger system with an even more generic "wear model", where a "wear model" is a black box that, given certain parameters, provides you with a "level of failure" at a given time. The current triggers can be seen as a wear model that jumps from not failed to failed instantly under certain conditions, but a more elaborate wear model could count usage cycles or running time internally, and provide a failure level according to a curve, for example. The current prototype is not very far from this, actually. The challenge is then pushed to aircraft modelers, who would be responsible for actually implementing this "partial failure" behavior.
Another interesting point of discussion is what would be a convenient way to make the wear status persistent across flights (if that is interesting), and what should they be associated to: aircraft model? immatriculation? just dumped to a file so you can load it at will?