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The Environmental Control System (ECS) of an aircraft provides thermal and pressure control of the engine bleed air for comfort of the crew members and passengers onboard. For safe and reliable operation of the ECS under complex operating environments, it is critical to detect and diagnose performance degradations in the system during early phases of fault evolution. One of the critical components of the ECS is the heat exchanger, which ensures proper cooling of the engine bleed air. This paper presents a wavelet-based fouling diagnosis approach for the heat exchanger.

This paper addresses the issues of Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI) in complex networked systems such as the Environmental Control System (ECS) of an aircraft. The ECS controls and supplies pressurized air to the aircraft and consists of multiple subsystems that in turn consist of interconnected components, heterogeneous sensing devices, and feedback controllers. These complex interconnections and feedback control loops make fault detection and isolation a very challenging task in the ECS. For example, a faulty component yields off-nominal outputs which are inputs to the other coupled components. This coupling leads to off-nominal outputs from otherwise healthy components, thus causing unwanted false-alarms. Secondly, due to off-nominal inputs, the healthy components are driven beyond their normal operating conditions, leading to cascading failures.

In the aerospace industry, competition is high and the need to ensure safety and security while managing costs is paramount. Furthermore, stakeholders—who gain the most by working together—do not necessarily trust each other. Now, mix that with changing enterprise technologies, management of historical records, and customized legacy systems. This issue touches all aspects of the aerospace industry, from frequent flyer miles to aircraft maintenance and drives tremendous inefficiency and cost. Technology that augments, rather than replaces, is needed to transform these complex systems into efficient, digital processes. Blockchain technology offers collaborative opportunities for solving some of the data problems that have long challenged the industry. This SAE EDGE™ Research Report by Rhonda D. Walthall examines how blockchain technology could impact the aerospace industry and addresses some of the unsettled concerns surrounding its implementation.

The aircraft asset life cycle processes are rapidly being digitalized. Many novel technologies enabled processes of recording these electronic transactions are being emerged. One such technology for recording electronic transactions securely is Blockchain, defined as distributed ledger technologies which includes enterprise blockchain. Blockchain is not widely used in the aerospace industry due to lack of technical understanding and questions about its benefits. Assessment and establishment of business case for implementing blockchain based solution is needed. The aerospace industry is very conservative when it comes to technology adoption and hence it is difficult to change legacy processes. Additionally, the industry is very fragmented. The technology is advancing at a faster rate and applies across geographies under various regulatory oversight which makes blockchain based solution implementation challenging.

The aircraft lifecycle involves thousands of transactions and an enormous amount of data being exchanged across the stakeholders in the aircraft ecosystem. This data pertains to various aircraft life cycle stages such as design, manufacturing, certification, operations, maintenance, and disposal of the aircraft. All participants in the aerospace ecosystem want to leverage the data to deliver insight and add value to their customers through existing and new services while protecting their own intellectual property. The exchange of data between stakeholders in the ecosystem is involved and growing exponentially. This necessitates the need for standards on data interoperability to support efficient maintenance, logistics, operations, and design improvements for both commercial and military aircraft ecosystems. A digital thread defines an approach and a system which connects the data flows and represents a holistic view of an asset data across its lifecycle.