Knut Weltz was awarded first prize in the "Best Master's Thesis" category for his thesis on analysing the condition and predictive maintenance of turbine and compressor systems
Every year, VFAALE e.V., the Association for Applied Automation Technology in Teaching and Development at Universities, awards prizes for the best Bachelor's and Master's theses in the field of automation technology during its AALE conference. Even though the AALE Conference 2021 could not take place due to the pandemic, prizes were again awarded this year for outstanding theses .
The winners of the three best Bachelor's and Master's theses presented their research work in short video podcasts during the virtual awards ceremony on 10 June 2021.
In the "Best Master's Thesis" category, Knut Weltz, a graduate of the Master's degree programme in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, won first prize for his Master's thesis on "Development of a model-based method for fault detection in complex compressor and turbine systems".
The thesis was written as part of the research project SmartTurbo research project in collaboration with AviComp Controls GmbH (Leipzig). In his master's thesis, Weltz deals with aspects of condition analysis and predictive maintenance applied to turbine and compressor systems. In contrast to data-based approaches, which now rely on the use of AI, Weltz focuses on a model-based approach, as simulation models will often be available as part of the digital twin in the future, while the availability of correspondingly annotated historical operating data is often problematic.
In his award-winning master's thesis, Weltz showed that fault models of the system components integrated into the simulation model, which are parameterised with the help of operating data for the fault case using an optimisation process, can at least validly identify the most likely sources of faults.
