Very High Frequency (VHF) Monitoring System for Engine Accessories Health Management

Impact Technologies, in collaboration with our engine OEM partners, is proposing to develop, test, and validate a very high frequency vibration-based engine accessory health management system that is capable of predicting current and future health while deployed on embedded hardware. Phase I achievements included the successful development and validation of various novel joint time frequency analysis (JTFA) techniques on multiple engine datasets, identification of appropriate prognostic approaches, and deployment on prototype hardware. When applied to VHF vibration data, the novel JTFA approaches were shown to provide better detection horizons and false alarm rates than conventional approaches during both steady state and transient operation. Phase II activities will focus on the optimum design and development of the analysis modules into a fully tested and mature embeddable software suite that can be transitioned to embedded hardware or licensed as standalone software. An actual prototype system will be fielded at our collaborators test facilities to test the software in real time on actual engine accessory data. Our product vision targets both smart accessories capable of autonomous self health assessment as well as a more traditional centralized PHM approach. BENEFIT: The successful design, development and prototyping of the proposed VAHMP software will benefit the military and commercial market by providing critical PHM coverage on crucial and often over looked engine accessories. These innovations can be used in combination or independently to fulfill current gaps in engine accessory diagnostic technology. For example, the integrated package can be used to provide a comprehensive PHM system coverage to an entire aircraft. Or, individual accessory specific modules can be embedded into the accessory in a distributed smart accessory-type product. This system can be packaged for test cell, pass off, or on-board implementation (as computational technology continues to improve). In addition, the proposed embedded system can be sold as a standalone industrial monitor, because of the widespread use of pumps, motors, and generators in almost every industry. Furthermore, the portions of the proposed approach can be implemented in legacy systems to provide improved detection and fault isolation capability. Ultimately, this program will close the gap between gas turbine engine PHM and accessory PHM technologies. Development and implementation of a comprehensive VAHMP approach will provide many benefits, including: correlation of very high frequency vibration events to failures, reduced maintenance and repair costs, and increased reliability of the monitored asset. Furthermore, the work will contain generic elements that can be transitioned to a broad range of other applications without additional sensors. The VAHMP could also be implemented in a wide range of civilian/commercial applications. These include commercial aircraft, power plants (in particular wind turbines), utilities, transportation, and petrochemical industries where reliability is essential to sustain production and repair times and periods need to be minimized.