Prevention of catastrophic failure of engine components is a major goal to the subtopic. Catastrophic failures of turbine engines are often caused by vibration-induced compressor and fan blade fatigue fractures. Existing capacitance systems have been unable to accurately measure blade vibration due to limited spatial resolution and limited system bandwidth. The proposed effort will develop a new capacitive system with significantly higher spatialresolution and wider bandwidth to provide high-accuracy time-of-arrival measurements for computing blade vibration. Successful demonstration of feasibility of the capacitive probe and electronics will lead to development of monitoring systems suitable for use on new engines as well as for retrofit on existing engines. The ability to detect excessibe blade vibration in flight will allow the pilot to change the engine operating parameters andthus prevent the occurrence of safety-significant blade fractures.
Potential Commercial Applications:Blade vibration monitoring of aircraft engines will involve the following applications: 1. Spin pit tests during engine development 2. Test engines during engine development 3. Production test equipment for engine manufacturing 4. Engine monitoring on flight engines 5. Engine monitoring and active clearance control on flight engines The last step combines the blade vibration monitoring with blade tip clearance measurement for use in a control system to dynamically adjust the tip clearance to achieve optimum engine performance.
