Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Gas turbine engines (GTE) have been widely used in civilian and defense sectors for generating energy and are critical to the operation of many industrial plants, aircrafts, and heavy vehicles. Any unexpected engine failure could be costly and potentially disastrous. Monitoring and predicting the GTE's health condition is therefore critically important and necessary in industries for gaining comprehensive knowledge of the engine system, improving operation reliability, and reducing maintenance cost. Because of their tremendous importance, extensive research has been conducted over the past decades in GTE health condition monitoring and prediction as a means to provide advance warning of failure, enable forecasted maintenance, and improve system qualification. Although a variety of methods have been proposed in the literature, reliable assessment of GTE current and future health conditions still remains a challenging task in both research and industrial applications due to the inherent complexities in GTE structures and time-varying operating conditions. Partnering with an Ottawa-based company, Life Prediction Technologies (LPTi), the proposed research is aimed at developing an intelligent GTE health monitoring and degradation prediction system to address this challenge. Our ultimate goal is to develop more reliable techniques and tools for GTE health condition monitoring and prediction to help Canadian companies improve asset utilization, reduce the total cost of GTE ownership, and remain competitive in the global market.*