An Onboard Adaptive Model for Aero-Engine Performance Fast Estimation

The onboard adaptive model is essential to the model-based control and diagnosis of the engine. However, current methods, such as the Kalman-based and the data-driven ones, cannot meet the demands of performance estimation well. Their self-tuning processes lead to a long period of model mismatch and, thus, degrade the quality of control and diagnosis, even causing engine failures. To overcome this disadvantage, a novel onboard adaptive model with fast estimation capability is proposed. The proposed method employs a component level model as the benchmark and introduces some scaling factors as the model tuners. These tuners are derived from the measurements and defined to quantify the characteristic deviations of the engine components at a certain operating condition. An algorithm with memory function is introduced to store the correlations between the tuners and the operating condition and, thus, predict these tuners according to the operating condition of inputs. By feeding the predicted tuners to the benchmark model, the engine performance can be estimated rapidly. Simulations are implemented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model. The results show that it has not only a high estimation accuracy at steady operating states, but also a short dynamic response time and the memory ability to avoid repeated self-tuning processes when the operating state of the engine varies.