Patent Document ID: 20100332474
Application ID: 12823284
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of determining or localizing a worn component in one of a machine and a process by periodically recording measured data in a machine or process database that supports one of a similarity-based or of a nearest neighbor search during the operation of the machine or process to form a historical record of the operation of the machine or process, receiving an input query comprising recorded measurement data for a current machine or process operating period to the database, and utilizing results returned from the database in response to the query to model component wear status of a component of the machine or process and to predict future behavior of the machine or process, the database being coupled to processor search manager apparatus, the processor search manager apparatus comprising a processor and memory, the method comprising receiving the input query comprising information representing recorded measurement data from a current machine or process operating period; utilizing a tree-structured index to retrieve stored information from the historical record that is most similar to said input information; obtaining component information associated with said retrieved stored information; and predicting the wear status of at least one component of the machine or process using one of the nearest neighbor and the similarity-based search model for processing said retrieved information comprising the retrieved stored information from the historical record and component information associated with said retrieved stored information.