Aircraft Engine Life-Consumption Monitoring for Real-Time Reliability Determination

The object of this research is to develop an in-service life-monitor system for the prediction of the remaining component and system life of aircraft engines. The embedded system will monitor the engines thrust, exhaust gas temperature, the engine efficiency, the speed and the time of operation of the engine in flight. Based upon this data, the life-estimation analog of the system will calculate the remaining lives of the components of the engine and combine these into a prediction of the remaining life of the engine. The calculations will be based on the statistical life distribution of the engine components and their relationship to load, speed, temperature and time. The monitoring device will be built for use with an operational aircraft engine.

NASA GRC is currently pursuing an overall agency-wide goal to increase flight safety of commercial aircraft as part of the NASA Aviation Safety program. In pursuit of that goal, analytical life prediction codes currently used to predict the service life of aircraft engines are being investigated, so that, NASA GRC can establish appropriate programmatic plans to address the deficiencies that now exist in those methods and approaches. By addressing these deficiencies, NASA and industry can cooperatively achieve the increased flight safety goals through a better understanding of the service life of aircraft engines. This effort will provide industry a mechanism to improve the safety, reliability and maintainability of commercial aircraft. It will affect cost-effective design and manufacturing for new production engines and can reduce life cycle and maintenance costs.

NASA GRC is currently pursuing an overall agency-wide goal of increasing the flight safety of commercial aircraft. This is part of the NASA Aviation Safety Program. In pursuit of that goal, the analytical life prediction codes that are currently used to predict the service life of aircraft engines are being investigated; so that, NASA GRC can establish appropriate programmatic plans to address the deficiencies that now exist in those methods and approaches. By addressing these deficiencies, NASA and industry can cooperatively achieve the increase flight safety goals through a better understanding of the service life of aircraft engines. Our SBIR effort will provide NASA and industry a mechanism to improve the safety, reliability and maintainability of commercial aircraft. It will improve the cost-effective design and manufacturing of new production engines.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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