Health Management and Sensing Technologies for Sustainable Aviation Fuel Systems

NASA is leading federal agencies and industry to accelerate the development of sustainable aviation technologies. This includes deploying new vehicle designs and architectures, as well as enabling use of sustainable aviation fuels. Hybrid Electric or All Electric vehicle concepts are in active development as are new Alternative Fuel/Hydrogen Vehicles. However, these aircraft concepts introduce new hardware systems along with new health management challenges. For example, fault detection and diagnostics of hybrid electric or all electric propulsion systems require an understanding of the operation, performance, degradation, and failure mechanisms of electric machines, converters (inverters/rectifiers), and power cables along with the operation of these devices in increasingly complex flight environments. Introduction of new vehicle types and integrated vehicle systems (power, structure, avionic, and propulsion systems) requires increasingly intelligent vehicle systems with capability to detect, diagnose, and predict system degradation, faults, and failures in a resilient and trustworthy manner. Furthermore, these intelligent vehicle systems must be capable of estimating a vehicle's capabilities as it degrades, especially for new vehicles systems entering the airspace. Monitoring the system health state has an impact on system operating cost, performance, efficiency, and improved system safety. Predictive maintenance reduces maintenance cost and vehicle down-time through reduced unnecessary maintenance and improved vehicle availability and throughput. Development of approaches and techniques for integrating diagnostic and prognostic information into maintenance and fault management strategies for sustainable aviation vehicles (i.e., predictive and condition-based maintenance). These are critical features that would allow new sustainable aviation vehicles to have more rapid introduction into the airspace. This call seeks proposals in both for Electric/Hybrid Sustainable Designs as well as Sustainable Aviation Fuel Systems In health management technologies for electric/hybrid aircraft designs, the technologies should be able to operate as needed in a high electric noise flight environment and provide actionable information for higher level diagnostics and prognostics. New electric/hybrid vehicles and their propulsion systems can be more economic, smarter, and safer by enabling increased health management capabilities. Areas of interest include: Health management technologies for the sensing, diagnosis, and prognosis of degradation and faults in flight quality electrical hardware and systems. The technology could be focused on electrical systems such as: Electric machines (motors/generators) including the health of bearings, lubrication and cooling, windings, rotor, insulation, etc. Converters (inverters/rectifiers) including the health of electronic components, cooling system, etc. High voltage wire and cables, including short or open circuits and insulation breakdown. Overall power quality including degradation/faults leading to voltage ripple, power instabilities, etc. Thermal management system health. System-level approaches that leverage measurement data collected across sustainable aviation systems including electromechanically coupled subsystems to infer overall system health. This includes distributed or coupled architectures comprised of electrical systems, motor driven propulsors, energy storage devices, gearboxes, mechanical drives, and fuel burning engines. In health management technologies for alternate fuel aircraft and new sustainable aircraft designs, the technologies should be able to provide actionable information for higher level diagnostics. Alternate fuel vehicles and their propulsion systems can be more economic, smarter, and safer by enabling increased health management capabilities. However, changing the fuel, e.g., the adoption of cryogenic hydrogen, can have massive impact on vehicle operations and health. Areas of interest include: Health management technologies for the sensing, diagnosis, and prognosis of degradation and faults in sustainable aviation fuel systems such as hydrogen vehicles that include cryogenic systems. The use of such fuels introduces their own health management challenges beyond that of conventional fuel systems. System-level approaches that leverage measurement data collected across sustainable aviation systems including alternate fuel vehicle subsystem and component information correlating multiple aspects of overall system health including structural degradation, fuel tank integrity, and fuel safety. This subtopic is not seeking proposals in: Battery health management technologies Electrical fault management systems and protective devices (such as circuit breakers).