Liquid-propellant rocket engine health-monitoring techniques

Health monitoring of liquid-propellant rocket engines (LRE) is one of the key technologies for improving the safety of existing engines and developing reliable next-generation engines. Extensive research has been done on the health monitoring of the Space Shuttle Main Engine and next-generation reusable LRE, A brief overview of these research projects is presented. Research advances on the health monitoring of the Long March Main Engine YF-20B are described in detail. The failure mode simulation and analysis of the YF-20B engine are introduced. A component module-based diagnosis method is developed, and a fuzzy hypersphere neural network is demonstrated for the fault detection and isolation of the engine. A real-time verification system for the health-monitoring algorithms and system was constructed and applied in the research.