Distributed Control and Interface for Viability of Plug and Play Engine Technology (DISCIPLE)

The Air Force is driving the research in advanced gas turbine engines that are envisioned to be smarter, more modular and more efficient that existing systems. In particular, the vision is to enable “plug and play” components, which can be seamlessly replaced with minimal human intervention. In order to achieve this vision, there are two critical requirements: an adaptive distributed control architecture that can work with addition or removal of “agents” and a software interface that allows this capability. To address this need, we propose to develop distributed adaptive controllers, as well as, interfaces that offer modularity and achievement of aforementioned objectives. The distributed architecture allows change of components, while adaptation results in achieving system level performance in spite of changes in subsystem controllers. Moreover, to minimize human effort, we propose a novel approach based on containerization, for automated ingestion of new controllers in the system.