2001-11-11Z2011-03-11T08:54:49Zhttp://cogprints.org/id/eprint/1864This item is in the repository with the URL: http://cogprints.org/id/eprint/18642001-11-11ZContextual normalization applied to aircraft gas turbine engine diagnosisDiagnosing faults in aircraft gas turbine engines is a complex problem. It involves several tasks,
including rapid and accurate interpretation of patterns in engine sensor data. We have investigated
contextual normalization for the development of a software tool to help engine repair technicians
with interpretation of sensor data. Contextual normalization is a new strategy for employing
machine learning. It handles variation in data that is due to contextual factors, rather than the
health of the engine. It does this by normalizing the data in a context-sensitive manner. This
learning strategy was developed and tested using 242 observations of an aircraft gas turbine
engine in a test cell, where each observation consists of roughly 12,000 numbers, gathered over a
12 second interval. There were eight classes of observations: seven deliberately implanted classes
of faults and a healthy class. We compared two approaches to implementing our learning strategy:
linear regression and instance-based learning. We have three main results. (1) For the given
problem, instance-based learning works better than linear regression. (2) For this problem,
contextual normalization works better than other common forms of normalization. (3) The
algorithms described here can be the basis for a useful software tool for assisting technicians with
the interpretation of sensor data.Peter TurneyMichael Halasz