Hardware-in-the-loop simulation of fuel control actuator of a turboshaft gas turbine engine

The turboshaft engine is the major component in the propulsion system of most marine vehicles, and proper control of its function as a sub-system in the propulsion system has a direct impact on the performance of the vehicle's propulsion control system. The engine performance control is performed through the fuel control system. The fuel control system of a turboshaft gas turbine engine consists of two parts: electronic control unit and fuel control unit which is the actuator of the fuel control system. In this article, a hardware-in-the-loop simulation is presented for testing and verifying the performance of the fuel control unit. In the hardware-in-the-loop simulation, the fuel control unit in hardware form is tested in connection with the numerically simulated model of engine and electronic control unit. In this simulation, a Wiener model for the turboshaft engine is developed which is validated with the experimental data. Subsequently, a multi-loop fuel controller algorithm is designed for the engine and the parameters are optimized so that the time response and physical constraints are satisfied. In the next step, a state-of-the-art hydraulic test setup is built and implemented to perform the hardware-in-the-loop test. The test system contains personal and industrial computer, sensors, hydraulic components, and data acquisition cards to connect software and hardware parts to each other. In this hardware-in-the-loop simulator, a host-target structure is used for real-time simulation of the software models. The results show the effectiveness of hardware-in-the-loop simulation in fuel control unit evaluation and verify the steady and transient performance of the designed actuator.