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Adding New Instrumentation to Aircraft Platforms


Mark Jordan, AV-8B Weapon Separation Test Team Lead, NAVAIR 5.1.6.6 Air Vehicle Stores Compatibility Division Fighter and Attack Branch, Patuxent River, MD, USA

Abstract

Legacy aircraft platforms face many hurdles; when it comes to testing these include but are not limited to: shrinking budgets, low priority, and lack of instrumentation. These hindrances to test programs are not likely to change in the near future. New low cost interchangeable instrumentation systems are needed to fill the gap between current test capabilities and future requirements.

In recent years, advances in technology have allowed instrumentation systems to greatly shrink both in size and cost. Some of these new instrumentation systems are designed to fit inside of a MK 80 series fuze well and are designed to look like existing bomb components. One of these is a small form factor instrumentation system nicknamed “6 DoF, ” because it transmits six degree of freedom information to a ground station. The 6 DoF is a completely self-contained instrumentation system that requires no aircraft interface to operate. The 6 DoF has provided a low cost data collection device for weapon separation test programs for the last couple of years. With the success of the 6 DoF instrumentation systems in weapon separation test programs, the question was raised if a similar system could be used for captive carriage loads and flying qualities test programs.

To meet this need a new low cost, under $30,000, instrumentation system has been developed. This system is designed to receive data from external strain gauges and accelerometers. This new system is a block upgrade of the 6 DoF instrumentation system that has had the internal sensors removed, and has had plugs installed, to take inputs from external sensors. Now instead of having to instrument a specific aircraft for a test program, a store could be instrumented to collect the same data.

This system is designed to not only allow the instrumentation to be moved from one type of aircraft to another, but also to allow the instrumentation to be moved from one type of store to another. Legacy platforms through the use of these low cost reusable instrumentation systems will be able to continue to provide new capabilities to the fleet even under reduced funds

Date: 
Mon, 2005-05-09