Stability Analysis for GE T700 Turboshaft Distributed Engine Control Systems

Future gas turbine engine control systems will be based on a distributed architecture in which the sensors and actuators will be connected to the controllers via a communication network. The performance of the distributed engine control (DEC) system is dependent on the network performance. The network-induced time delay may degrade the performance of the closed-loop systems and even destabilize the systems if the controllers are designed without considering the effects of the delay. This paper introduces a new method to estimate the maximum tolerance of the time delay for analysis of the stability of the GE T700 turboshaft engine DEC system. The sufficient conditions for stability are derived and dynamic output feedback controllers for the turboshaft engine are applied. Hardware-in-the-loop simulation illustrates the effectiveness of the presented method.