Health Management Tools for Rocket Engine Turbomachinery

Impact Technologies, in collaboration with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, propose to develop and demonstrate foundational elements of an advanced Health Management system for Rocket engine turbopumps. The project team intends to build off of a best-in-class technology review and architecture/implementation trade studies to initially develop prototype diagnostic and prognostic modules for turbopump bearings that can expand to other subcomponents that pose reliability or life cycle cost concerns. The technical approach will leverage existing COTS sensor validation and advanced signal processing tools and couple them with bearing physics-of-failure models so that accurate remaining useful life estimates can be generated. While the Phase I effort will focus on ground-based Health Management tools that can be used to increase operational availability and reduce life cycle support cost for next generation Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLV), spiral development to on-board real-time capability is targeted in follow-on phases where justified. Demonstration of the developed technology will be performed in the Matlab/Simulink environment with real algorithms operating on real data sets. Furthermore, the output of the diagnostic/prognostic modules will be integrated into a maintenance reasoning concept enabling readiness certification for the next mission and providing recommendations for accelerated or delayed inspection/repair intervals to help optimize maintenance turnaround times for these critical propulsion system components.