Leveraging large self-supervised time-series models for transferable diagnosis in cross-aircraft type Bleed Air System

Abstract

Bleed Air System (BAS) is critical for maintaining flight safety and operational efficiency, supporting functions such as cabin pressurization, air conditioning, and engine anti-icing. However, BAS malfunctions, including overpressure, low pressure, and overheating, pose significant risks such as cabin depressurization, equipment failure, or engine damage. Current diagnostic approaches face notable limitations when applied across different aircraft types, particularly for newer models that lack sufficient operational data. To address these challenges, this paper presents a self-supervised learning-based foundation model that enables the transfer of diagnostic knowledge from mature aircraft (e.g., A320, A330) to newer ones (e.g., C919). Leveraging self-supervised pretraining, the model learns universal feature representations from flight signals without requiring labeled data, making it effective in data-scarce scenarios. This model enhances both anomaly detection and baseline signal prediction, thereby improving system reliability. The paper introduces a cross-model dataset, a self-supervised learning framework for BAS diagnostics, and a novel Joint Baseline and Anomaly Detection Loss Function tailored to real-world flight data. These innovations facilitate efficient transfer of diagnostic knowledge across aircraft types, ensuring robust support for early operational stages of new models. Additionally, the paper explores the relationship between model capacity and transferability, providing a foundation for future research on large-scale flight signal models.