Intelligent Engine Control and Health Monitoring

In this effort, intelligent strategies will be developed for turbine engine failure detection, health monitoring, and control. This effort will accomodate an integrated intelligent control approach for the design of a high performance control system for propulsion systems based on advanced sensor processing, fuzzy adaptive control and neural fuzzy control integration. The ultimate goal is to ensure stability, flying quality and safety, cost reduction, graceful degradation and reoptimization in the case of failures, malfunctions and damage. In addition, an expert system will be developed for supporting the pilot's decision-making tasks. A hardware and software simulation environment will be fully developed to carry out digital and hardware-in-the-loop real-time simulation of propulsion systems. This environment will provide a powerful tool to test and validate the new technologies in expert systems, modern control, fuzzy logic, decision-making, and neural networks in their applications to general propulsion control and at the meantime, significantly reduce the cost of the development. Anticipated Benefits: The technique of intelligent health monitoring for turbine engines directly benefits the military/civilian aviation and space areas. Such a system will lead to improved performance, enhanced safety, and increased reliability, availability, and durability. The developed hardware-in-the-loop real-time simulation system can be applied to industrial manufacturing and processing significantly reduce the cost of the development.