Patent Document ID: 8775427
Application ID: 13693864
Patent Flag: 1

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 machine or process database, and utilizing results returned from the machine or process 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 machine or process 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 of the machine or process database; utilizing a tree-structured index determined using multivariate statistical analysis of the historical record to retrieve stored information from the historical record of the machine or process database that is most similar to said input query information using one of a nearest neighbor and a similarity-based search; obtaining component information of the one of the machine and the process associated with said retrieved stored information from the machine or process database; and predicting the wear status of at least one component of the machine or process by using a model for processing said retrieved information comprising the retrieved stored information from the historical record and obtained component information associated with said retrieved stored information from the machine or process database.