Fusion of Vibration and Oil Debris Sensor Data for Improved Engine Bearing Health Management

Safety incidents due to failure of rolling element bearings in aircraft gas turbine engines are a significant cost to the Department of Defense. Oil debris monitoring (ODM) has been shown to be effective as an early indicator of engine bearing faults. On a complex engine with multiple components that produce wear debris, the addition of vibration monitoring can provide a localized prediction of exactly which component is degrading or failing. Data fusion of vibration and ODM sensor data has been shown to improve the statistical performance of bearing and gear fault detection and isolation while simultaneously maintaining or reducing false alarms and missed alarm diagnosis in a test rig environment. This type of integrated monitoring system has not been fully demonstrated on an aircraft engine. This SBIR will integrate the hardware, software, and data from mature, robust, commercially available vibration and ODM sensors into a versatile Engine Health Management (EHM) system. IAC has teamed with GasTOPS for development of this system. The results and systems developed on this SBIR can be directly applied to improving EHM performance for the F135 and other gas turbine engines.