Generic Propulsion Health Management / Controller System

The Air Force is developing a wide variety of technologies for aircraft propulsion system health management (PHM). Unfortunately many promising new sensor technologies and new algorithms cannot easily be deployed for on-wing demonstration. On Phase I IAC, with Hamilton Sundstrand and Luppold & Associates support, developed a requirements specification, h/w and s/w design for a PC-104 based generic system. A preliminary Simulink demonstration to perform engine virtual sensing was also developed. That Simulink script is the first target application for transition to the full generic system. On the initial Phase II, working with Hamilton Sundstrand IAC will build the actual hardware and software system. The system will be used to implement an inlet distortion sensing system for the Active Integrated Inlet Duct Engine Demonstrator (AIIDED) UAV. The system is ideal for a variety of other UAV health monitoring and control applications. A single card system will be developed. The system is based on the Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA. This will allow for a smaller, lighter, faster, and larger operating temperature h/w suite that is well suited to UAV applications. The MathWorks Simulink™ and Xilinx System Generator™ are used for algorithm development and validation of the integrated system operation.