Aircraft engine hot-section virtual sensor creation and gas path performance monitoring

Abstract

Various Kalman filter approaches have been presented for performance estimation of aircraft engines provided that sensor measurement numbers are sufficient and all of them are available. However, it is difficult to collect all physical parameters along the gas path since the complex structure limits sensor installation, especially around the high-pressure turbine. The contribution of this article is to create a virtual sensor in the hot-section based on the component physical characteristics and aerothermodynamic theory and develop a dual hypothesis test strategy combined with a state estimator to track abrupt degradation of the engine component. A novel couple algorithm of the unscented Kalman filter using a virtual sensor is developed that has three primary advantages: (i) The performance degradation of four rotatory components can be estimated without sensor P₄₃. (ii) The accuracy of state estimation using the virtual sensor is equivalent to that of sensor P₄₃, and it adapts to the abrupt change of engine operating condition in the whole flight envelope. (iii) If the sensor can be installed in the future, it can be engaged to its analytical redundancy. Simulations are carried out on typical abrupt degradation datasets of aircraft engines, which demonstrate the superiority of anomaly detection of gas path component performance using virtual sensor measurements, especially hot-section components.