INTERGRATED QUALITATIVE/ QUANTITATIVE REASONING WITH ENHANCED CORE PREDICTIONS AND EXTENDED TEST PROCEDURES FOR MACHINE FAILURE ISOLATION USING QUALITATIVE PHYSICS

The presence of particular faults in a machine is determined using constraint suspension and Qualitative Physics by estimating a time for performance for each of a plurality of machine test procedures and providing a summation, for each test procedure, of estimated times for performing portions of each of the test procedures. Portions of the machine test procedures which are unnecessary due to a present test configuration of the machine are not included in the summation. A particular test procedure is chosen from the group of machine test procedures by selecting the one of the machine test procedures having a highest test score where the test score varies inversely to the summation. The test procedure can be a component health assessment and/or an observation of a machine parameter.