US 5,267,436 AGranted

Vectoring nozzle control of gas turbine engines

AssigneeUnited Technologies Corporation

InventorsCoy B. Wood, Jr., Calvan G. DeFreese

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

Exhaust vectoring control for gas turbine engines having an exhaust nozzle mounted on a ring that is positionally controlled by a plurality of actuators in response to pitch and yaw commands uses signal processing to convert pitch and yaw signals into actuator extensions based upon stored coordinates identifying the location of each actuator connected to the ring in relation to the X, Y and Z reference axes of the engine. The computation of these coordinates takes into account the orientation of the ring. The largest actuator change is selected and limited to a stored maximum allowable change in extension for a fixed or set time interval, such as a signal processor cycle, thereby limiting actuator vector rate. The limited change is divided by the largest computed extension change, producing a ratio or factor that is multiplied by the computed changes for the other actuators, producing a set of actuator signals that are simultaneously applied to their respective actuators for the processor cycle.

Claims7

Dependent claims

An aircraft gas turbine engine exhaust nozzle control, comprising an exhaust nozzle supported on a control ring, a plurality of actuators connected to the ring and anchored to the engine, a pitch and yaw control and a signal processor that responds to pitch and yaw signals in angular dimensions from the pitch and yaw control to position the nozzle in an orientation relative to X, Y, Z axes of the engine, characterized by:

said signal processor comprising means for providing, in response to said pitch and yaw signals, a first signal, for each actuator, comprising computed requested changes in actuator extension based upon said pitch and yaw signals and stored coordinates identifying the location of the connection of the actuator on the ring on said X, Y and Z axes at the beginning of a first of successive time intervals;
for providing, in response to said first signal, a second signal that represents a change in extension of a first of the actuators that is the largest change in extension of all the actuators at the beginning of said time interval;
for providing, in response to said second signal, a third signal that represents a permissible change in the extension of said first actuator for the duration of said time interval;
for providing, in response to said second and third signals, a fourth signal that manifests a ratio computed by dividing said permissible change by said greatest change;
for providing, in response to said fourth signal and said first signal;
a first set of signals in which each signal manifests the product of said computed actuator extension multiplied by said ratio;
and for providing each signal in said set to an actuator for said time interval.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.