Performance Estimation and Fault Diagnosis Based on Levenberg–Marquardt Algorithm for a Turbofan Engine

Establishing the schemes of accurate and computationally efficient performance estimation and fault diagnosis for turbofan engines has become a new research focus and challenges. It is able to increase reliability and stability of turbofan engine and reduce the life cycle costs. Accurate estimation of turbofan engine performance counts on thoroughly understanding the components’ performance, which is described by component characteristic maps and the fault of each component can be regarded as the change of characteristic maps. In this paper, a novel method based on a Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) algorithm is proposed to enhance the fidelity of the performance estimation and the credibility of the fault diagnosis for the turbofan engine. The presented method utilizes the LM algorithm to figure out the operating point in the characteristic maps, preparing for performance estimation and fault diagnosis. The accuracy of the proposed method is evaluated for estimating performance parameters in the transient case with Rayleigh process noise and Gaussian measurement noise. The comparison among the extended Kalman filter (EKF) method, the particle filter (PF) method and the proposed method is implemented in the abrupt fault case and the gradual degeneration case and it has been shown that the proposed method has the capability to lead to more accurate result for performance estimation and fault diagnosis of turbofan engine than current popular EKF and PF diagnosis methods.