Robust Fault Diagnosis of Aircraft Engines: A Nonlinear Adaptive Estimation-Based Approach

In this brief, a fault detection and isolation (FDI) method is developed for aircraft engines by utilizing nonlinear adaptive estimation techniques. The fault diagnosis method follows a general architecture developed in previous papers, where a fault detection estimator is used for fault detection, and a bank of nonlinear adaptive fault isolation estimators are employed to determine the particular fault type/location. Each isolation estimator is designed based on the functional structure of a particular fault type under consideration. The general FDI architecture is applied to a realistic nonlinear aircraft engine model recently developed by NASA Researchers. In addition, the robustness of the fault diagnostic method with respect to normal engine health degradation is enhanced by adaptive thresholds and adaptive approximation techniques, hence accurate diagnostic performance is maintained while the engine continues to degrade over its lifetime. Some representative simulation results are given to show the effectiveness of the robust nonlinear FDI method.