Aero-Engine Real-Time Models and Their Applications

Aero-engine real-time models are widely used in control system design, integration, and testing. They can be used as the basis for model-based engine intelligent controls and health management, which is critical to improve engine safety, reliability, economy, and other performance indicators. This article provides an up-to-date review on aero-engine real-time modeling methods, model adaptation techniques, and applications for the last several decades. Besides, future research directions are also discussed, mainly focusing on the following four areas:(1) verification of the aero-engine real-time model over the full flight envelope; (2) better balance between real-time performance and accuracy in simplified methods for the aero-thermodynamic component level models; (3) further improvement in the real-time performance for the identified nonlinear models over the full flight envelope; (4) improvement of hybrid on-board adaptive real-time models combining the advantages of both model-based and data-based on-board adaptive real-time modeling methods.