Eddy Current Sensor System for Blade Tip Clearance Measurement Based on a Speed Adjustment Model

Blade tip clearance (BTC) measurement and active clearance control (ACC) are becoming crucial technologies in aero-engine health monitoring so as to improve the efficiency and reliability as well as to ensure timely maintenance. Eddy current sensor (ECS) offers an attractive option for BTC measurement due to its robustness, whereas current approaches have not considered two issues sufficiently. One is that BTC affects the response time of a measurement loop, the other is that ECS signal decays with increasing speed. This paper proposes a speed adjustment model (SAM) to deal with these issues in detail. SAM is trained using a nonlinear regression method from a dynamic training data set obtained by an experiment. The Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) algorithm is used to estimate SAM characteristic parameters. The quantitative relationship between the response time of ECS measurement loop and BTC, as well as the output signal and speed are obtained. A BTC measurement method (BTCMM) based on the SAM is proposed and a geometric constraint equation is constructed to assess the accuracy of BTC measurement. Experiment on a real-time BTC measurement during the running process for a micro turbojet engine is conducted to validate the BTCMM. It is desirable and significative to effectively improve BTC measurement accuracy and expand the range of applicable engine speed.

[1]  J. Chivers,et al.  A technique for the measurement of blade tip clearance in a gas turbine , 1989 .

[2]  Weimin Wang,et al.  Investigation on the Turbine Blade Tip Clearance Monitoring Based on Eddy Current Pulse-Trigger Method , 2016 .

[3]  John D. Denton,et al.  The 1993 IGTI Scholar Lecture: Loss Mechanisms in Turbomachines , 1993 .

[4]  Fabrice Thouverez,et al.  Rotor to stator contacts in turbomachines. Review and application , 2013 .

[5]  Joseba Zubia,et al.  Architecture for Measuring Blade Tip Clearance and Time of Arrival with Multiple Sensors in Airplane Engines , 2018 .

[6]  Aleksandr Maslovskiy,et al.  Microwave Turbine Tip Clearance Measuring System for Gas Turbine Engines , 2008 .

[7]  Donald L. Simon,et al.  Sensor Needs for Control and Health Management of Intelligent Aircraft Engines , 2004 .

[8]  Kevin J. Melcher,et al.  A Reduced Model for Prediction of Thermal and Rotational Effects on Turbine Tip Clearance , 2003 .

[9]  C. Lawson.  Capacitance tip timing techniques in gas turbines , 2003 .

[10]  Gotzon Aldabaldetreku,et al.  An Optical Fiber Bundle Sensor for Tip Clearance and Tip Timing Measurements in a Turbine Rig , 2013, Sensors.

[11]  Sami El-Borgi,et al.  Simulating eddy current sensor outputs for blade tip timing , 2018 .

[12]  Lars Büttner,et al.  A laser-optical sensor system for blade vibration detection of high-speed compressors , 2015 .

[13]  Yi Cai,et al.  Numerical and experimental investigation on thermohydrodynamic performance of turbocharger rotor-bearing system , 2017 .

[14]  Shuiting Ding,et al.  Investigation on performance and implementation of Tesla turbine in engine waste heat recovery , 2019, Energy Conversion and Management.

[15]  Josu Amorebieta,et al.  Tip-Clearance Measurement in the First Stage of the Compressor of an Aircraft Engine , 2016, Sensors.

[16]  Ronald S. Bunker,et al.  Axial Turbine Blade Tips: Function, Design, and Durability , 2006 .

[17]  Guillermo Paniagua,et al.  High-fidelity rotor gap measurements in a short-duration turbine rig , 2012 .

[18]  Ding Shuiting,et al.  Algorithm to Construct Line-Shaped Feature Point Clouds of Single-Value Ruled Blades for Gas Turbines , 2014 .

[19]  Mark R. Woike,et al.  Testing of a Microwave Blade Tip Clearance Sensor at the NASA Glenn Research Center , 2013 .

[20]  Allan J. Volponi,et al.  Gas Turbine Engine Health Management: Past, Present, and Future Trends , 2014 .

[21]  Gerardo Aranguren,et al.  An Architecture for On-Line Measurement of the Tip Clearance and Time of Arrival of a Bladed Disk of an Aircraft Engine , 2017, Sensors.

[22]  Jiang Zhe,et al.  Online monitoring of dynamic tip clearance of turbine blades in high temperature environments , 2018 .

[23]  W. Ostachowicz,et al.  Fourier spectral-based modal curvature analysis and its application to damage detection in beams , 2017 .

[24]  Craig Lawson,et al.  Tubomachinery blade vibration amplitude measurement through tip timing with capacitance tip clearanc , 2005 .

[25]  Fajie Duan,et al.  Turbine blade tip clearance measurement using a skewed dual-beam fiber optic sensor , 2012 .

[26]  Luis S. Rosado,et al.  Defect Characterization With Eddy Current Testing Using Nonlinear-Regression Feature Extraction and Artificial Neural Networks , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.

[27]  Zdenek Kubin,et al.  Calibration of blade tip-timing sensor for shrouded 40″ last stage blade , 2018 .

[28]  Gotzon Aldabaldetreku,et al.  Optical Tip Clearance Measurements as a Tool for Rotating Disk Characterization , 2017, Sensors.

[29]  Gotzon Aldabaldetreku,et al.  Optical Fiber Sensors for Aircraft Structural Health Monitoring , 2015, Sensors.

[30]  J. Denton.  Loss Mechanisms in Turbomachines , 1993 .

[31]  A. G. Sheard.  Blade by Blade Tip Clearance Measurement , 2011 .

[32]  Bruce M. Steinetz,et al.  Test Rig for Evaluating Active Turbine Blade Tip Clearance Control Concepts , 2003 .

[33]  Seamus D. Garvey,et al.  Dynamics of Rotating Machines , 2010 .

[34]  Jie Li,et al.  A Blade Tip Timing Method Based on a Microwave Sensor , 2017, Sensors.

[35]  Wieslaw Ostachowicz,et al.  Two-dimensional modal curvature estimation via Fourier spectral method for damage detection , 2016 .

[36]  Jonathan A. DeCastro,et al.  A Study on the Requirements for Fast Active Turbine Tip Clearance Control Systems , 2004 .