Application of physical-structure-driven deep learning and compensation methods in aircraft engine health management

The operational well-being of aircraft-engine turbine components is paramount for engine safety. Monitoring exhaust gas temperature (EGT) serves as a key indicator of their condition. Real-time and precise EGT prediction in aircraft engines plays a pivotal role in ensuring flight safety and effective engine health management. A deep learning model based on the long short-term memory (LSTM), integrated with the physical topology of the aircraft engine, served as the basic prediction model for EGT. Based on Taylor expansion, error compensation was performed on model errors arising from sensor error and performance degradation, three compensation models were developed: a Base model consistent with the basic prediction model, an LSTM model, and a multilayer perceptron model. Their influence on prediction accuracy was examined. Each compensation model was trained using two distinct fusion methods: a global compensation method (GCM) and a real-time compensation method (RtCM). The research also explored how different fusion methods contributed to enhancing prediction accuracy. The results showed that the basic model used in this study achieved high prediction precision. The addition of the compensation model further improved the prediction precision. The GCM effectively reduced the mean absolute relative error (MARE), while the RtCM effectively reduced the maximum absolute relative error (Emax) without increasing the prediction time. The best model evaluated on the four engine test datasets had a MARE value of 0.166%, Emax value of 2.745% and mean absolute error of 1.13°C, indicating high prediction precision.