Technology That Makes a Difference

Military & Industrial Applications

Funded by the U.S. Air Force, LURACO Technologies demonstrated a novel distributed FADEC architecture for modern turbine jet engine monitoring and control in U.S. military and commercial aircraft.

Current centralized FADEC systems interface with numerous sensing and control elements throughout the turbine engine to provide optimal engine control, implement health management functions throughout the flight envelope, and at all stages of engine life. The FADEC is responsible for acquiring, scaling, and processing all data from engine sensors including the prognostics and health management functions of the sensors themselves. The focus of this research and development effort is to develop robust intelligent distributed FADEC technologies that can withstand the high temperature and vibration environment while embedded in the gas turbine engine, specifically capable of operating in minimum temperature environments of 1,200ºF and vibrations in excess of 500grms. The intelligent distributed FADEC will provide a network of smart sensor/control nodes. Each sensor/control node has the capability to distribute the signal conditioning, diagnostics, prognostics, health management functionality, and communicate through a standardized interface. The smart sensor/control nodes must be able to communicate to the propulsion system controller through a high-speed data bus and be able to withstand high temperature and vibration.

LURACO developed a proof-of-concept for the novel intelligent distributed architecture of FADEC for JET engine sensing and control that is able to withstand aircraft engine environments, network with various sensors, actuators, controllers, and interface with various sensor modalities and technologies.