Meeting the performance requirements of a single-spool gas turbine engine using a gain scheduled controller

The authors describe the design and evaluation of a gain scheduled controller that meets the performance requirements of a single-spool gas turbine engine. The requirements of fast thrust response with ensured engine safety have been translated into requirements and constraints on the compressor characteristics to be achieved by the controller. The synthesis of the control is based on linearizing a nonlinear engine model about a set of closely spaced steady-state operating points and applying the closed-loop synthesis approach. The controls are the fuel flow and final nozzle area, and the control structure is that of the proportional-integral (PI) controller. In this way, the nonlinear control problem is reduced to a series of linear control problems. A gain scheduled controller whose feedback gains vary with engine nondimensional shaft speed is constructed