A measurement system for production flight tests of new aircraft

A measurement system for production flight tests of new aircraft

van de Leijgraaf, R.
van Dorp, W.A.
Storm van Leeuwen, S.
Udo, R.

National Aerospace Laboratory NLR

1989-08-01

Today there is an increasing pressure on the fast delivery of a newly manufactured aircraft and on the strict guarding of its performance figures. It is therefore essential to reduce the necessary time between completion of the new aircraft and the moment of deliverance to an airline. This means that production flight testing time must be minimized while the calculation-accuracy of the performance figures must preferably be increased, or must at least stay at the same level. With this goal in mind, a measurement system has been developed for the production flight tests with the Fokker 50 and the Fokker 100 production aircraft. This system had the following design objectives: - portable - Installation time less than 3 hours - on board processing facilities for the following purposes: - calibration of measured data - real time calculation of performance parameters - c[uick look facilities for the flight test engineer - data available immediate after the flight for the Fokker engineers. The system can be divided into two parts. Fart One is the Data Acquisition Module which gathers data from the aircraft systems and records this raw data on magnetic tape for backup. The Data Acquisition Module is developed using the basic modular concept and basic components of the measurement systems used in the prototypes of the Fokker 50 and Fokker 100 aircraft. The second part is the Data Processing Module which performs the calibration of the measured data, the real time calculation of performance parameters and provides quick look presentation facilities during the measurements of the production flight tests. For the Data Processing Module the VME bus computer concept is adopted. The processed data is recorded on magnetic tape in a computer compatible format and is ready for analysis immediately after the flight. In this paper, the measurement system for the production flight tests will be described with the emphasis on the hardware and software description of the Data Processing Module. Furthermore the use of the system in the operational phase and experience from the first few flight with this system in the Fokker 50 and Fokker 100 aircraft will be given.

flight test instruments
measuring instruments
data processing
data acquisition
aircraft production
applications programs (computers)
data recording
Fokker Aircraft
real time operation
equipment specification

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a1dc9a00-4c28-4406-a959-e24693e9480a

Nationaal Lucht- en Ruimtevaartlaboratorium

Campus only

NLR Technical Publication TP 89222 U

Aerospace Engineering Reports

report

(c) 1989 National Aerospace Laboratory NLR