Flight Control Test System

Flight Controls Company

Overview

Nexjen Systems, LLC was awarded a contract by a flight controls company to design integrate a cockpit feel and drive actuator test system. The actuator is a sub-assembly in a military vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft, manufactured by a major aerospace concern. During manufacturing the test system performed run-in, electrical test and mechanical verification automated test procedures (ATP) along with quality checks. Test included electrical conductivity, RVDT, voltage measurements, tachometer checks, load versus displacement, motor performance and drive characteristic checks.

Challenge

Redesign the existing test system and implementation an up-to-date acquisition, control and interface hardware-based solution. The system must improve the accuracy of all measurements using COTS components and provide a platform with automated test sequencing, servo motor control and run-in functionality. The integrator must develop an easy to use operator interface with an extensive fault isolation capability for engineers and technicians and provide an automated report generation capability which eliminates the current pen and paper data collection methods.

Solution

Nexjen Systems designed and implemented a NI LabVIEW and TestStand based mechanical test rig to test 3 different cockpit feel and drive units. The mechanical rig consisted of a 4-bar linkage between the UUT, load cells, encoder and servo actuator. The test system provided an extensive manual mode test, set-up and tuning capability. The system was built using a PXI platform with a DMM, load cell conditioning, data acquisition, switching and digital IO. The system provided servo control of the UUT, AC power sourcing for excitation of motors and position sensors and interfaced with a high precision encoder and a range of load cells.

Developed 3 ATP and run-in using custom mechanical test system with servo control and 4-bar linkage for dynamic test.
200 lb load range with dynamic load control accuracy of 1lb.
Custom TestStand user interface provided feedback troubleshooting capability. Modular test case architecture provided stand-alone or sequenced test capability with ability to loop, break and single step through and into test cases.
Extensive manual mode provided run-in, tuning and adjustment features.
Automatic report generator provides all graphs and test data in a report form matching ATP specifications.
Achieved higher reliability and throughput reducing test time from > 2 hours to 25 minutes.