Regression Based Modeling of a Fleet of Gas Turbine Engines for Performance Trending

Abstract

Module performance analysis is a wellestablished framework to assess changes in the health condition of the components of the engine gaspath. The primary material of the technique is the socalled vector of residuals, which are built as the difference between actual measurement taken in the gaspath and the values predicted by means of an engine model. Obviously, the quality of the assessment of the engine condition depends strongly on the accuracy of the engine model. The present paper proposes a new approach for datadriven modeling of a fleet of engines of a given type. Such blackbox models can be designed by operators, such as airlines and thirdparty companies. The fleetwide modeling process is formulated as a regression problem that provides a dedicated model for each engine in the fleet, while recognizing that all engines are of the same type. The methodology is applied to a virtual fleet of engines generated within the Propulsion Diagnostic Methodology Evaluation Strategy (ProDiMES) environment. The set of models is assessed quantitatively through the coefficient of determination and is further used to perform anomaly detection.