A Design Environment for Performance Modeling and Analysis of Aero Engine Lubrication Systems

This paper presents the overview and capability of design Environment for performance modeling and analysis of aero engine lubrication systems. The design environment is implemented as an intuitive and easy to use toolbox implemented within the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) simulation software environment MATLAB/Simulink^®. The toolbox consists of a library of predefined reusable/generic lubrication system components like flow resistance elements, pumps and orifice. The component behavior is modeled mathematically using first principles and component characteristics. The developed components have been extensively verified & validated with actual hardware test data covering multiple test points in the flight envelope and also different failure modes of the system. The verification & validation methodology and the results of the component tests, is not the subject of the paper. The aero engine lubrication system is modeled by connecting the components drawn from the library to form a network consisting of nodes and flow paths. The solver implemented computes the unknown pressure and flow values in the lubrication circuit. The design environment has been used to perform steady state performance analysis of aero engine lubrication system. It has additional capability to perform parametric studies, trade studies, design exploration, analyzing simulation results and automated report generation, which will be described in the paper. The flexible software architecture and modular programming techniques has delivered the significant benefit of component models reuse. The generic nature of the toolbox can be exploited to perform system modeling and analysis of any hydraulic system.