The rapid advancement of machine-learning techniques has played a significant role in the evolution of engine health management technology. In the last decade, deep-learning methods have received a great deal of attention in many application domains, including object recognition and computer vision. Recently, there has been a rapid rise in the use of convolutional neural networks for rotating machinery diagnostics inspired by their powerful feature learning and classification capability. However, the application in the field of gas turbine diagnostics is still limited. This paper presents a gas turbine fault detection and isolation method using modular convolutional neural networks preceded by a physics-driven performance-trend-monitoring system. The trend-monitoring system was employed to capture performance changes due to degradation, establish a new baseline when it is needed, and generatefault signatures. The fault detection and isolation system was trained to step-by-step detect and classify gas path faults to the component level using fault signatures obtained from the physics part. The performance of the method proposed was evaluated based on different fault scenarios for a three-shaft turbofan engine, under significant measurement noise to ensure model robustness. Two comparative assessments were also carried out: with a single convolutional-neural-network-architecture-based fault classification method and with a deep long short-term memory-assisted fault detection and isolation method. The results obtained revealed the performance of the proposed method to detect and isolate multiple gas path faults with over 96% accuracy. Moreover, sharing diagnostic tasks with modular architectures is seen as relevant to significantly enhance diagnostic accuracy.

Since aeronautic transportation is responsible for a rising share of polluting emissions, it is of primary importance to minimize the fuel consumption any time during operations. From this perspective, continuous monitoring of engine performance is essential to implement proper corrective actions and avoid excessive fuel consumption due to engine deterioration. This requires, however, automated systems for diagnostics and decision support, which should be able to handle large amounts of data and ensure reliability in all the multiple conditions the engines of a fleet can be found in. In particular, the proposed solution should be robust to engine-to-engine deviations and different sensors availability scenarios. In this paper, a probabilistic Bayesian network for fault detection and identification is applied to a fleet of engines, simulated by an adaptive performance model. The combination of the performance model and the Bayesian network is also studied and compared to the probabilistic model only. The benefit in the suggested hybrid approach is identified as up to 50% higher accuracy. Sensors unavailability due to manufacturing constraints or sensor faults reduce the accuracy of the physics-based method, whereas the Bayesian model is less affected.

The reliability and cost-effectiveness of energy conversion in gas turbine systems are strongly dependent on an accurate diagnosis of possible process and sensor anomalies. Because data collected from a gas turbine system for diagnosis are inherently uncertain due to measurement noise and errors, probabilistic methods offer a promising tool for this problem. In particular, dynamic Bayesian networks present numerous advantages. In this work, two Bayesian networks were developed for compressor fouling and turbine erosion diagnostics. Different prior probability distributions were compared to determine the benefits of a dynamic, first-order hierarchical Markov model over a static prior probability and one dependent only on time. The influence of data uncertainty and scatter was analyzed by testing the diagnostics models on simulated fleet data. It was shown that the condition-based hierarchical model resulted in the best accuracy, and the benefit was more significant for data with higher overlap between states (i.e., for compressor fouling). The improvement with the proposed dynamic Bayesian network was 8 percentage points (in classification accuracy) for compressor fouling and 5 points for turbine erosion compared with the static network.

There are many challenges that an effective diagnostic system must overcome for successful fault diagnosis in gas turbines. Among others, it has to be robust to engine-to-engine variations in the fleet, it has to discriminate between gradual deterioration and abrupt faults, and it has to identify sensor faults correctly and be robust in case of such faults. To combine their benefits and overcome their limitations, two diagnostic methods were integrated in this work to form a multi-layer system. An adaptive performance model was used to track gradual deterioration and detect rapid or abrupt anomalies, while a series of static and dynamic Bayesian networks were integrated to identify component degradation, component abrupt faults, and sensor faults. The proposed approach was tested on synthetic data and field data from a single-shaft gas turbine of 50 MW class. The results showed that the approach could give acceptable accuracy in the isolation and identification of multiple faults, with 99% detection and isolation accuracy and 1% maximum error in the identified fault magnitude. The approach was also proven robust to sensor faults, by replacing the faulty signal with an estimated value that had only 3% error compared to the real measurement.

In a gas turbine fault diagnostics, the removal of measurement noise and data outliers prior to the fault analysis is very essential. The conventional filtering methods, particularly the linear ones, are not sufficiently accurate, which might possibly lead to the loss of critically important features in the fault analysis process. Conversely, the recorded accuracies obtained from the non-linear filters are promising. Recently, the focus has been shifted to the artificial neural network (ANN) based nonlinear filters due to their capability of providing a robust identity map between the input and output data, which can be efficiently exploited in the process of fault diagnosis. This paper aims to present combined auto-associative neural network (AANN) and K-nearest neighbor (KNN) based noise reduction and fault detection method for a gas turbine engine application. The performance of the developed method has been evaluated using data obtained from a model simulation. The test results revealed that the developed hybrid method is more effective and reliable than the conventional methods for the fault detection of the gas turbine engine with negligible false alarms and missed detections.

Advanced engine health monitoring and diagnostic systems greatly benefit users helping them avoid potentially expensive and time-consuming repairs by proactively identifying shifts in engine performance trends and proposing optimal maintenance decisions. Engine health deterioration can manifest itself in terms of rapid and gradual performance deviations. The former is due to a fault event that results in a short-term performance shift and is usually concentrated in a single component. Whereas the latter implies a gradual performance loss that develops slowly and simultaneously in all engine components over their lifetime due to wear and tear. An effective engine lifecycle monitoring and diagnostic system is therefore required to be capable of discriminating these two deterioration mechanisms followed by isolating and identifying the rapid fault accurately. In the proposed solution, this diagnostic problem is addressed through a combination of adaptive gas path analysis and artificial neural networks. The gas path analysis is applied to predict performance trends in the form of isentropic efficiency and flow capacity residuals that provide preliminary information about the deterioration type. Sets of neural network modules are trained to filter out noise in the measurements, discriminate rapid and gradual faults, and identify the nature of the root cause, in an integrated manner with the gas path analysis. The performance of the proposed integrated method has been demonstrated and validated based on performance data obtained from a three-shaft turbofan engine. The improvement achieved by the combined approach over the gas path analysis technique alone would strengthen the relevance and long-term impact of our proposed method in the gas turbine industry.