American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 1 Modeling and Simulation Studies of a Decentralized Architecture for a Distributed Turbine Engine Controls Saleh Zein-Sabatto 1 , Richard Mgaya 2 , Mohammad Bodruzzaman 3 College of Engineering, Technology and Computer Science Tennessee State Universit, Nashville, TN, 37209, USA and Alireza Behbahani 4 Turbine Engine Division, Propulsion Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB, OH 45433, USA An aircraft engine is a multidimensional and highly parametric complex system with dynamics and strong non-linear behavior with stochastic properties. Many modern gas turbine engines today are centralized and specialized design by a highly integrated dual channel engine-mounted controller, such as a Full Authority Digital Electronic Controls (FADEC) to control all functions of the aircraft engines. In contrast to the centralized approach of the FADEC, the control architectures have been designed in which the functionality is more distributed around the engine to smart sensors, smart actuators and other subcomponents. The intent of these alternative architectures is to reduce overall system weight and improve reliability and diagnostics. Using fewer cables, the intent is also to reduce the functionality within the FADEC and to improve life cycle costs using improved fault diagnostics. Implementation of a distributed control of turbine engines constitutes practical realization of decentralized control architecture on a dedicated hardware. Such hardware realization of decentralized control architecture poses a new set of challenges. This paper provides an overview of solutions to some challenges associated with real world realization of decentralized control architecture on turbine engines in the form of a distributed hardware system. It also provides methodology used for the development and integration of a distributed control and diagnostics software for turbine engines. Developmental steps, implementation architecture and preliminary simulation results of the proposed distributed control system are reported in this paper. Preliminary results showed potential success of implementing distributed control of turbine engines. I. Introduction n turbine engine control strategies, centralized control architecture has been a legacy. This architecture proved to be very successful with some concerns such as the total weight of the control system which accounts to 15% - 20% of the engine weight [1]. However such a centralized sytem may not be reliable and leads to system unavailability by a single failure at any operating point. To make the centralized control system more reliable, redundant components are used, which increases the engine weight. For this reason, it is desired to change from a centralized control system to a decentralized or a distributed one. Currently, distributed architectures are being explored as an alternative. The potential benefit of distributed engine control architecture in aero-engine has been described in [2]. Such benefits are weight reduction, performance improvement and overall cost reduction. In this architecture however there are some technical challenges such as acquisition of high temperature electronics and real-time communication for coordination and synchronization of data. Despite the attention given to and benefits 1 Professor, College of Engineering, Technology and Computer Science, AIAA Senior Member. 2 Graduate Student, College of Engineering, Technology and Computer Science AIAA Member. 3 Professor, College of Engineering, Technology and Computer Science, AIAA Senior Member. 4 Senior Aerospace Engineer and Group Leader, Bldg. 18D, 1950 Fifth Street, AIAA Associate Fellow. I 47th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit 31 July - 03 August 2011, San Diego, California AIAA 2011-6150 Copyright © 2011 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.