Fault detection for aircraft piston engine by exhaust noise analysis

Most light aircrafts are powered by piston engines. During its operation piston engine generates pressures within cylinders and consequently at exhaust valves that have counterparts in exhaust noise impulses at the end of exhaust tube. These impulses can be recorded by pressure microphone, stored, analyzed and used for fault detection. Method for fault detection based on exhaust noise analysis is proposed. Because examples of engine faults are very rare (due to inherent reliability of aircraft engine), decision thresholds are determined from assumed normal distribution of extracted features and estimated MTBF of the aircraft piston engine.