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Design and HIL-based Verification of The Fuel Control Unit For A Gas Turbine Engine
Design and HIL-based Verification of The Fuel Control Unit For A Gas Turbine Engine
fuel control unit for a gas turbine engine Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0954410020910593
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Abstract
The correct operation of a gas turbine engine depends on the accurate and stable performance of fuel control system
and its components such as fuel control unit. Fuel control unit is an electro-hydraulic actuator of fuel control system
whose function is to supply, regulate and send the fuel to the engine according to the electronic control unit command. In
this paper, a new fuel control unit has been developed based on the load sensing concept for a turboshaft gas turbine
engine. In the designed fuel control unit, the fuel flow rate is controlled by adjusting the fuel pressure. A NARX model
and ANFIS controller is employed to design the pressure controller. A hardware in the loop framework, comprising of
hydraulic circuit, sensors, data acquisition card and computers, is developed to evaluate the performance of the fuel
control unit alongside the real-time simulation of other component such as engine and electronic control unit. Moreover,
the consumed power by the fuel control unit is evaluated and a considerable improvement is indicated compared to
typical fuel control units.
Keywords
Turboshaft engine, fuel control unit, NARX modeling, hardware in the loop testing
turboshaft engine. The ECU receives the engine sig- based on these type of pumps seems to be practical.
nals, i.e. power turbine shaft speed, the compressor In the modern variable displacement pumps, pump
shaft speed and the exhaust gas temperature, and displacement can be adjusted using several methods.
sends the desired amount of the fuel to FCU. Among these methods, load sensing (LS) method,
Despite the numerous studies on ECU design and which is a demanding topic, comes with the advantage
control algorithms,9–12 there is very little research in of providing high efficiency.13 On the basis of LS
the design and testing of FCU performance, for method, an improved method, called electro-hydrau-
instance, in Georgantas et al.,2 by making changes lic load sensing (ELS), is proposed which is more pref-
and removing the mechanical controller, a hydro- erable in terms of performance and stability.14 In ELS
mechanical fuel control system is converted to elec- system, it is necessary to provide proper and accurate
tro-hydraulic control system that has the ability to control of the pressure. However, classical controllers
receive an electric command. In this reference, a soft- such as PID and PI are widely used in most industrial
ware-based control algorithm was designed to control systems,15,16 but in many cases, these controllers do
the fuel rate of a turboshaft gas turbine engine, and not have optimal performance. The major drawbacks
was implemented on an electronic hardware device. of this kind of controllers are dependency on the
Then, the function of the new control system accuracy of the mathematical model of the systems
was investigated. In Mohtasebi and Hong3 and and the difficulty of their parameters setting to have
Mohtasebi,4 different structures of FCU for turbojet a satisfactory response at different performing points.
engine were investigated and eventually an appropri- On the other hand, modeling of hydraulic systems is
ate structure was proposed. In literature,6–8 the per- often not accurate due to the changes in the system
formance of a turbojet engine FCU was evaluated parameters over time as well as nonlinear behavior of
through experiments. The structure examined for the the system as a result of friction and materials behav-
FCU in this references includes a fixed displacement ior,17 and therefore the design of a classic controller is
pump, flow control and bypass valves. In these struc- difficult. In order to solve this problem, advanced con-
tures, the pump always generates maximum amount trol methods such as fuzzy logic, neural networks,
of fuel flow rate, and the excess fuel flow is bypassed optimal control,18 etc. can be used. These methods
via the bypass valve. The main drawback of these considerably reduce the dependency of the controller
structures is the high amount of energy dissipation design process on the mathematical model of the
due to the permanent bypass of the excessive fuel system and result in better performance in controlling
flow. The use of variable displacement pumps in the the systems. Also, fuzzy controllers have a faster
FCU design comes with the advantage of supplying response than the classical controllers in case of
the fuel flow equally to the fuel demand. It should facing with large input changes.19 One of the most
be noted that some previously designed hydro- important problems in the design of fuzzy controllers
mechanical fuel control systems have employed vari- is the need for expert knowledge in setting its
able displacement pumps owing to their capability of parameters and rules. Therefore, the use of hybrid
hydro-mechanically adjusting the fuel flow. But the intelligent systems such as ANFIS that combine the
advancement of electronics and its application in benefits of fuzzy systems and neural networks
hydraulic systems made the fixed displacement together will be useful. The adaptive-neural-fuzzy-
pumps more preferable for being utilised in the interface-system (ANFIS) is an adaptive network
design of the modern fuel control systems as a result based on the fuzzy inference system and is in fact a
of less complexity. hybrid method for the implementation of the fuzzy
At the present time, in accordance to the recent system. In the ANFIS structure, it is possible to
improvements in electronic and electro-hydraulic obtain the parameters of the fuzzy controller as the
instruments as well as their application in variable weights of a neural network during the training
displacement pumps, designing a fuel control unit process.20
Salehi and Montazeri-GH 3
controller receives pressure values continuously by pressure across the sides of the throttle valve to the
pressure sensors and sends the control signal to the pressure control valve (6). The pressure control valve
pressure control valve. The pressure control valve (6) adjusts the hydraulic pressure value acting on the
controls the pump displacement by adjusting the pres- swash plate angle control mechanism. The orifice
sure on one side of the compensator valve. valve (5) acts as a filter on the hydraulic pressure.
A schematic illustration of the hydraulic circuit of The fuel enters the combustion chamber after fuel
designed ELS-FCU is shown beside the ECU in nozzle (8).
Figure 5. As shown in the figure, the fuel flows from
the fuel tank (1) to the suction filter (2) and after that
enters the main fuel pump (4) via the booster-pump
FCU modeling
(3). The fuel exits the main pump into the throttle In this paper, system identification method is used to
valve (7). The throttle valve receives the relevant com- model the FCU. System identification is a practical
mand from the ECU (9). By changing the cross-area way for physical systems modeling which have com-
of the throttle valve in accordance with the ECU com- plexity in physical laws or parameters. For example,
mand, the displacement volume is adjusted by the gas turbine modeling is used in literature,25–27 for
ELS controller and the pressure control valve (6). hydraulic valve in literature28,29 for variable displace-
The ELS control system (10) receives the pressure sig- ment pumps modeling in literature.21,30,31
nals through the sensors (11) and (12) and sends the A test system including: sensors and data collection
required command to maintain a fix differential system and hydraulic circuits was designed and
constructed to measure and record FCU data. In
Figure 6, a schematic diagram of the hydraulic circuit
of the test system is presented. As shown in the figure,
the fuel from the reservoir is transferred to FCU by
the booster-pump (1), and the regulated fuel from the
FCU is directed to the nozzle (5) and measured by the
flowmeter (4). The fuel is returned to the reservoir
after passing through the nozzle. The pressures in dif-
ferent areas are measured by pressure sensors (2, 3).
Non-flammable white oil was used instead of fuel, in
which its viscosity and density are same with the
turboshaft engine fuel.
The NARX (Nonlinear Auto Regressive with
eXogenous inputs) model is used for modeling the
FCU. Equation (1) defines the NARX model
Figure 4. Structure of the ELS displacement control system. Y^ ðtÞ ¼ GðXÞ ð1Þ
ELS Pressure
controller 10
12
6 Engine
ECU 9
5
4 11
Fuel nozzle
Pressure
gage
7 8 To combuson chamber
Pressure
gage
3
Figure 5. A schematic of the hydraulic circuit of designed FCU based on ELS method.
Salehi and Montazeri-GH 5
(a) 8
0 20 40 60 80
Time (sec)
(b) 3
0.25
signal is used.
We have divided the gathered data into two sec-
Figure 7. FCU test result. (i) Excitation signals, a: fuel flow
tions, one section for using in training process and
rate command b: pressure command. (ii) c: fuel flow rate.
other for testing the model. The ‘‘best fit’’ criterion
d: load sense line pressure.
(equation (12))32 is used for checking the accuracy of
the model
PN !
Table 1. Result of NARX identification.
i¼1 yi y^ i
Best Fit ¼ 1 PN 100% ð12Þ
i¼1 yi y Order: [na][nb1] NO. of NO. of Best
Model [nb2][nk1]a layer neuron fit
where y and y^ are the system output and model Pressure [10][10] [10] [1] 2 10 94.2
output, respectively and y is the mean of system model
output. FMF model [15][15] [15][1] 2 10 92.16
As shown in Table 1, two NARX models are con- a
na: input regressors number, nb: output regressors number, nk: input
sidered for modeling the ELS-FCU, one for fuel flow delay of system.28
rate and the other for load sense line pressure.
Figure 8 shows the results of the NARX models
simulation alongside the plant outputs for test signal. adaptive parameters. So these parameters can be
The comparison shows the NARX model accuracy to adjusted using the proper training method.
simulate the actual system behavior for different Figure 9 shows the block diagram of the control
forms of the input. system of the ELS-FCU. As shown in the figure, the
ANFIS algorithm is used to control the differential
pressure in the ELS-controller. The objective of the
Pressure controller design
controller is to keep the pressure difference constant,
ANFIS controller is used to control the pressure on equal to pd , on the both sides of the throttle valve.
control valve (compensator). ANFIS is an adaptive As shown in Figure 9, the input of the controller is
network based on a fuzzy inference system that has the error value and the derivative of the error. The
the ability to model a set of IF-THEN rules with output of the controller (uc ) is obtained from the
6 Proc IMechE Part G: J Aerospace Engineering 0(0)
20
15
In Figure 10, the results of the pressure control are
shown using the ANFIS control algorithm. Fix value
10
for pressure difference means that pl ¼ pls is shown in
5 Figure 10(b). As seen in the figure, the pressure con-
60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95
Time (sec) trol is performed with proper accuracy by the ANFIS
(b) controller.
0.25 Simulation
Experiment
Fue Flow (kg / sec)
0.2
HIL testing
0.15 HIL platform
0.1
As previously mentioned, in this paper, the HIL test
method is used to evaluate the designed FCU per-
55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95
Time (sec) formance. In this method, the FCU as a hardware is
tested alongside the real-time engine simulator. This
Figure 8. Simulation result of the NARX model. (a) Result of method allows the FCU testing in all working condi-
the load sense line pressure model. (b) Result of fuel flow rate tions and close to reality. Figure 11 shows the HIL
model. test platform which is used in this paper. As shown in
(a) (b)
Figure 10. Performance of the controller in (a) pressure-difference controlling and (b) tracking.
Salehi and Montazeri-GH 7
the figure, ECU and engine are simulated in software real-time simulation, the Wiener modeling method27
and runs on the computer. In this platform, the simu- is used as a gray box method. Figure 13 shows the
lations are performed in a real-time manner using block structure of the Weiner model.
Xpc-target toolbox of MATLAB in which the The Wiener model consists of a nonlinear static
compiled Simulink model is run on the target block and a linear dynamic block. The nonlinear
computer that utilizes the real-time operating static block in the gas turbine model expresses the
system (OS). The simulation result is transmitted relationship between the input fuel flow-rate to the
through the data accusation cards to the FCU. engine and the output variables of the model in a
Pressure and fuel flow-rate signals are also sent to steady state point. The linear dynamic block also
the computer and the simulation software via data expresses the transient state of the engine from
accusation cards. a steady state point to another steady point.27
For performing the HIL test, a bench including A lookup table and first-order transfer function is
PCs for software simulation, data acquisition cards, considered as nonlinear and linear block in the
flowmeter sensor, pressure sensor and hydraulic engine’s Wiener model. Figure 14 shows the Wiener
system is designed. The accuracy of flowmeter and model structure for the studied turboshaft engine. As
pressure sensor is 0.031% and 0.5%, respectively. shown, a nonlinear and linear block is considered for
Figure 12 shows a graphical representation of the each engine output. Information about the nonlinear
laboratory test system. block is derived from the results of the thermo-
dynamic simulation and testing of the engine.
Real-time modeling
Engine control unit. The engine control design is per-
Turboshaft engine. As mentioned above, the engine and formed based on the min-max algorithm according
controllers are modeled and simulated in real-time. In to Salehi and Montazeri-Gh35 and Montazeri-Gh
order to have a fast dynamic model of the engine for et al.36 In this algorithm, the fuel flow rate is selected
from the outputs of several control loops based on
min-max selection rule. Figure 15 shows the designed
min-max controller for turboshaft gas turbine engine
fuel controller. As shown in this figure, six control
loops are considered. The main target of the
Figure 11. Structure of the HIL test. Figure 13. Block structure of the Weiner model.
Figure 12. Graphical representation of laboratory test system. (1: fuel pump; 2: throttle valve; 3: pressure control valve; 4: flow-
meter; 5: pressure sensor; 6: PC computer).
8 Proc IMechE Part G: J Aerospace Engineering 0(0)
Figure 15. Min-max control strategy for turboshaft gas turbine engine.
Salehi and Montazeri-GH 9
0.9 1.4
NPT-SIM
1.3 NPT-HIL
Load (normalized)
0.8
1.2
NPT/ NPT(des)
1.1
0.7
1
0.6 0.9
0.8
0.5
40 50 60 70 80 90 0.7
35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90
Time (sec) Time(Sec)
Figure 16. Power turbine loading. Figure 17. Deviation of power turbine speed.
NGG/ NGG(des)
change of the applied load to the power-turbine shaft. 0.9
In this study, the min-max parameters were opti-
0.88
mized using the invasive weed optimization (IWO)
algorithm.34 In the optimization process, the minimum 0.86
680
As the load changes, the control system, which aims 670
660
to keep the power turbine rotational speed constant, 650
changes the engine power by adjusting the amount of 640
injected fuel into the combustion chamber. The HIL 630
620
testing results are compared with the software simu- 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90
Time(Sec)
lation results of fuel control system and engine. The
software simulation results actually indicate the
desired operation of the control system. Figure 19. Exhaust gas temperature.
By reducing the applied load to the power turbine
shaft in t ¼ 50 s, the power turbine speed increases
according to Figure 17. The controller reduces the exhaust gas temperature, as illustrated in Figure 19.
power of the engine to prevent increase of the speed Thus, desired and accurate performance of the
and to keep it constant as much as possible. Hence, designed FCU is validated through HIL tests.
the speed of the power turbine decreases to its nom- To compare the ELS-FCU power consumption,
inal value. Also, in the t ¼ 70 s, the load applied to the the results are compared with the MIL simulation
power turbine shaft increases (Figure 16). In this situ- results of a conventional FCU6 used in modern
ation, the power turbine speed decreases as shown in fuel control systems. Figure 20 shows the schematic
Figure 17. The control system prevents this speed diagram of the conventional fuel control unit in
drop by increasing the amount of the injected fuel modern fuel control systems.6 The design uses a pro-
into the combustion chamber and increasing the portional valve to regulate the fuel flow and a pressure
power of the engine. compensating valve to keep the pressure difference
HIL test results indicate good consistency com- constant.
pared to software simulation results in terms of Figure 21 shows the power required by an ideal
power turbine speed, as illustrated in Figure 17, com- FCU, with 100% efficiency, and the power consump-
pressor rotor speed, as illustrated in Figure 18 and tion of ELS-FCU and conventional FCU for the
10 Proc IMechE Part G: J Aerospace Engineering 0(0)
Figure 20. The structure of a conventional FCU used in modern fuel control systems.
Conclusion
In this paper, design and testing the FCU for a turbo-
shaft gas turbine engine have been investigated.
Electrohydraulic load sensing (ELS) method is uti-
lised to design the FCU based on the variable
displacement pump. In the ELS system, using the elec-
tronic controller makes it possible to take advantage
of software-based control algorithms and low pass
filters as well as high speed actuators (pressure control
valve), and consequently a higher speed fuel flow
control with better accuracy and stability can
Figure 21. Required power and power consumption of be accomplished by FCU. ANFIS controller is
FCUs.
employed in order to control the load sensing line
pressure of FCU. For this purpose, a NARX-based
modeling is performed to model the ELS-FCU and
then the IWO optimization algorithm is used to tune
the ANFIS parameters. In addition, a test bench
was designed to perform the HIL simulations,
which makes it possible to test the FCU in the
near-real conditions. The HIL results comparison
with the software simulation results indicate the
correctness of the ELS-FCU performance and the
ability of the structure to provide proper fuel flow
control subject to the engine requirements and ECU
commands.