Overall system: Engine control

Optimum engine control and monitoring units and flawless accessories are essential for the safety of aircraft. MTU has a broad background of experience in this field. Its line of products encompasses the overall engine control and monitoring system as well as the integration of subsystems and equipment including associated software. The company’s competencies extend from equipment, software and system development all the way to system validation, production support and maintenance.

Engine control systems

Becoming increasingly apparent is the need to closely link the engine control system with the flight control system and the supply systems. Current control units are central devices featuring a direct, analog connection to every component in the engine. Each additional component requires a separate physical connection including a line and connector. Unless the concept is changed, a control box would in the future be characterized by a plurality of connections, although its interior would require only a fraction of the space.

MTU is pushing the notion of a distributed engine control system in which every electrical component has its own control logic and is driven by a central unit via data bus.

Engine control: monitoring and diagnostics

For the Eurofighter’s EJ200 engine, MTU has developed a new generation of engine control units that control the engine and concurrently monitor it. Its primary task is to immediately alert to defects, while its number two job is to prevent defects through earliest possible detection of deviations. These technological capabilities are gradually being transitioned also to other engines.

An engine trend monitoring system, for instance, has been developed for use by MTU’s maintenance shops that captures essential operating data to detect defects early on thus preventing costly repairs. Click here for more information.

More Electric Engine: New challenges for engine control systems

On the next generation of aircraft, experts anticipate electric power requirements to quintuple, not least because the air conditioning system, for example, will no longer operate on engine air but on electricity. On the engine proper, too, mechanical and hydraulic components will advantageously be replaced with electrical units because these are efficient, more flexible to accommodate and smarter.

The More Electric Engine of the future will come with a plurality of sensors, electric motors and control elements, posing new power management, control engineering and engine monitoring challenges.

At the magnitudes involved in future, the conventional approach of using a generator to tap electric power at the high-pressure shaft is no longer practicable. A highly promising solution seems to be to connect an additional generator to the low-pressure shaft and integrate it into the low-pressure turbine.