Reliability assessment based on Bayesian networks for full authority digital engine control systems

Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC) systems are widely used in commercial aircraft engines nowadays and system reliability has an important effect on the safety of aircraft operation. A reliability analysis framework is proposed in this study. Bayesian networks (BNs) are used to obtain the reliability function of the system which is able to analyze FADEC systems in the continuous time domain. A practical FADEC system is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of our formalism. Compared with others, this formalism can analyze systems in the continuous time domain, and a multi-state characteristic can be described. The result shows that our BN based formalism is a powerful tool for reliability analysis of FADEC systems.