Coordinated Power and Thermal Control for Conflicting System Demands
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Solution Overview
Problem
Individual systems coupled together or interfacing with one another lack coordinated control, leading to inefficient operation and increased complexity due to the lack of data sharing and conflicting control objectives.
Innovation Solution
An integrated system with a coordinated control system that receives status and prediction data from individual systems, performs a conflict check, and determines operating modes and demands without requiring implementation details, allowing each system to operate based on its own internal control schemes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If individual systems are coupled together without coordinated control, then system autonomy and simplicity are maintained, but operational efficiency deteriorates due to conflicting control objectives and lack of data sharing
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a coordinated control system as an intermediary between individual systems. This mediator receives status and prediction data from each system, performs conflict checks, and determines operating modes without requiring implementation details from individual systems. The intermediary enables efficient coordination while preserving system autonomy by acting as a neutral facilitator that manages interactions without imposing complex integration requirements on individual systems.
2Productivity
If coordinated control is implemented with full data sharing, then operational efficiency is improved, but system complexity and intellectual property sharing requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the necessary status and prediction data from individual systems, rather than requiring complete data sharing. The coordinated control system receives minimal essential information needed for conflict detection and resolution, eliminating the need for complex data transfer protocols and reducing intellectual property concerns. This selective data extraction maintains operational efficiency while significantly reducing system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The control architecture is segmented into independent individual systems and a centralized coordinated control system. Each individual system maintains its own control logic and autonomy, while the coordinated control system handles high-level coordination. This segmentation allows systems to operate independently with simple local control while achieving global optimization through the coordinated controller, reducing overall system complexity.
3Ease of operation
If air is bled from the gas turbine engine to meet cabin pressurized air demand, then cabin pressurization is achieved, but engine efficiency deteriorates due to lack of coordinated control
Solution Approach 1:
The coordinated control system implements feedback by continuously monitoring the status and prediction data from both the gas turbine engine and air cycle machine. Based on this feedback, the system dynamically determines operating modes and adjusts control parameters to optimize the balance between cabin pressurization and engine efficiency. The feedback mechanism enables real-time coordination, ensuring that air bleeding decisions consider both cabin requirements and engine performance impacts.
Data Source
AI summary
An integrated system and methods therefore are provided. An integrated system has individual power and/or thermal systems and a coordinated control system. The coordinated control system receives mission demands and priorities from an upstream system. The coordinated control system also receives a status and a prediction from each individual system, such as an individual system's operating mode status and its capability margin. The coordinated control system performs a conflict of interest check and generates a relative status for each individual system based on the status and predictions associated with the individual systems. The coordinated control system determines an operating mode and an allowed demand for each individual system based on the relative statuses and the mission demands and priorities. The coordinated control system outputs the operating modes to the individual systems and maps the allowed demands to individual system demands. The individual system demands are output to the individual systems.