Title :
OPAD: an innovative rocket engine health monitoring systems
Author :
Benzing, Daniel A. ; Hopkins, Randall C. ; Whitaker, Kevin W. ; Cooper, Anita E. ; Powers, W.T.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Aerosp. Eng. & Mech., Alabama Univ., Tuscaloosa, AL, USA
Abstract :
The Optical Plume Anomaly Detection (OPAD) program, supported by NASA´s Marshall Space Flight Center, is an effort to provide rocket engine health monitoring via spectrometric detection of anomalous atomic and molecular species in the exhaust plume. Years of developmental work have evolved a system that has had recent success during routine testing with identifying engine threatening erosions in the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME). Recently, an OPAD instrument flew aboard the Delta Clipper Experimental Advanced (DC-XA) test vehicle. Currently, OPAD researchers are preparing to deliver a flight ready health monitor by the year 1999 for scheduled flight experiments on the Shuttle
Keywords :
aerospace computing; computerised monitoring; fault diagnosis; neural nets; real-time systems; rocket engines; spectrochemical analysis; spectroscopy; Delta Clipper test vehicle; Marshall Space Flight Center; NASA; OPAD; Shuttle; atomic species; engine threatening erosions; exhaust plume; molecular species; optical plume anomaly detection; rocket engine health monitoring; routine testing; spectrometric detection; Atom optics; Engines; Instruments; Intelligent vehicles; Monitoring; Optical detectors; Rockets; Space shuttles; Spectroscopy; System testing;
Conference_Titel :
Digital Avionics Systems Conference, 1997. 16th DASC., AIAA/IEEE
Conference_Location :
Irvine, CA
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-4150-3
DOI :
10.1109/DASC.1997.637255
