The rapidly increasing costs of maintenance, the demand for increased equipment utilization, fuel costs and the difficulty of correctly diagnosing internal mechanical problems in operating gas turbine engines has stressed the requirement for more effective monitoring and diagnostic equipment. Such equipment must be capable of performing three functions:
1. Acquiring condition data from operating gas turbines,
2. Analyzing the acquired data, and
3. Associating the cause and effect relationship to an incipient malfunction.
This paper describes the MTI Automated Vibration Diagnostic System (AVID) developed for the U. S. Air Force jet engine overhaul centers. The AVID concept is to automate troubleshooting procedures for fully assembled gas turbine engines. The System extracts high-frequency vibration data from existing, standard instrumentation to provide input to a specialized Symptom/Fault Matrix. This Symptom/Fault Matrix is configured to analyze the incoming data and assign a particular malfunction (or malfunctions) to a specified data set. This diagnosis is then printed out to provide maintenance personnel with exact knowledge of what the problem is and how to correct it.
This System, plus the growing awareness on the part of personnel of the capabilities of such automated equipment, will enable the Air Force to significantly reduce expenses at their jet engine overhaul facilities.
