An Efficient Approach for Identification of the Inlet Distortion of Engine Based on Acoustic Emission Technique

Effective and accurate diagnosis of engine health is key to ensuring the safe operation of engines. Inlet distortion is due to the flow or the pressure variations. In the paper, an acoustic emission (AE) online monitoring technique, which has a faster response time compared with the ordinary vibration monitoring technique, is used to study the inlet distortion of an engine. The results show that with the deterioration of the inlet distortion, the characteristic parameters of AE signals clearly evolve in three stages. Stage I: when the inlet distortion J ≤ 30%, the characteristic parameters of the AE signal increase as J increases and the amplitude saturates at J = 23%, faster than the other three parameters (the strength, the root mean square (RMS), and the average signal level (ASL)). Stage II: when the inlet distortion 30% < J ≤ 43.64%, all the parameters saturate with only slight fluctuations as J increases and the engine works in an unstable statue. Stage III: when the inlet distortion J > 43.64%, the engine is prone to surge. Furthermore, an intelligent recognition method of the engine inlet distortion based on a unit parameter entropy and the back propagation (BP) neural network is constructed. The recognition accuracy is as high as 97.5%, and this method provides a new approach for engine health management.