SENSOR FAULT DETECTION AND ISOLATION IN TURBOFAN ENGINES USING KALMAN FILTER

We know that turbofan engines is the tye of jet engine which is used in most of the commercial civil aircrafts as well as in military planes.As the turbofan engines are highly modernized their working and their performance are constantly monitored by onboard computer through EICAS, FADEC,ECU and many other units.They assess the engine data based on the sensor readings from the engine.If the sensor gives the faulty readings which will result in erroneous problems. It results in the immmediate grounding of flight which includes increase in the operating cost and results in passenger per seat mile cost. As well as immediately after grounded as per the criticality of the damage it should be sent to the Engine bay for overhauling and maintenance whch utilizes usable operating time of flights.if the sensor readings are found to be faulty at the end there will be no other option available as we have already lost usable operating time, Mean Time Between Overhauls(MTBO), passenger loyalty and much more. We have to findout the problem associated with the sensor readings well in advance and we have to assure the integrity of the sensor readings. For that we need to mathematically model and simulate the type of jet engine we are going to consider and it ll act as an observer (gives the readings 10 times before the actual engine gives) , as we have the values now we can go for the integration of Kalman filter. It is a good predictor and estimator whhich can predict the futue valuesbased on the present and past inputs. Now, from the mathematica model we have the engine data , if we fed those datas to the kalman filter it ll estimate the future values . The third and final stage is the comparision of the sensed readings from the kalman filter with the known and accepted criticality values.if it exceeds the criticality limit then it ll initiate the failure flag on the type of sensor where the failure occurs.so that we can know the failures well in advance which gives us enough time to decide about the maintenance option. Either we can reoute the plan to the nearby mmaintenance base where theproblem can be solved or it can be sent to an overhaul base where the engines can be stripped apart for repair.this mode of sensing and predicting the future values.By knowing the problem well in advance we can make the unscheduled maintenance of an aircraft in to scheduled maintenance.if this project is done successfully it ll be an big asset for the engine manufacturer as well as for airlines to schedule their aircrafts maintenance to utilize the maximum operating time which increases their revenue and reduced MTBO reduces passenger per seat mile cost which means reduction iin air tickets which is an added advantage to the peoples and humanity.