Aircraft Engine Gas Path Diagnostic Methods: Public Benchmarking Results

Recent technology reviews have identified the need for objective assessments of aircraft
engine health management (EHM) technologies. To help address this issue, a gas path
diagnostic benchmark problem has been created and made publicly available. This software
tool, referred to as the Propulsion Diagnostic Method Evaluation Strategy (Pro-
DiMES), has been constructed based on feedback provided by the aircraft EHM
community. It provides a standard benchmark problem enabling users to develop, evaluate,
and compare diagnostic methods. This paper will present an overview of ProDiMES
along with a description of four gas path diagnostic methods developed and applied to
the problem. These methods, which include analytical and empirical diagnostic techniques,
will be described and associated blind-test-case metric results will be presented
and compared. Lessons learned along with recommendations for improving the public
benchmarking processes will also be presented and discussed.