H. Ribet, M. Humbert

Before being flight tested, a large number of ground tests are performed on flight control system components. Many tests are dedicated to single components of the flight control system, such as sensors, computers, and servocontrols. However, before going into flight tests, the whole flight control system is tested on a large test bench ("the iron bird") that can support nearly all of the hardware parts of the control loop. This test bench is used to ensure the proper integration of the different systems, and to analyse the system behaviour in conditions that are very close to real flight. This test bench calls for simulation models that are run in real time during system tests to provide the flight control system with a simulated "in flight" environment; the first being a flight mechanics model, as typical objectives of a flight control system are expressed in terms of flight mechanics behaviour. But with the development of recent very large civil aircraft and the control requirements performance increase, the flight control system needs to extend its objective to new disciplines like the structural dynamics and the load. To extend the system validation up to these new disciplines, AIRBUS has developed an enhanced iron bird that can validate the flight control system interactions with the load and the aeroelastics fields. Load model, and aeroelastic model have been implemented in the iron bird in the real time simulation software, to constitute what we may call a ?flexible aircraft iron bird?. This paper presents first the principle of this flexible aircraft iron bird. The architecture of the aeroelastic and the loads models and the connections with other models are presented. Then examples of application of the flexible aircraft iron bird on the validation of the flight control system of a large aircraft are presented. Finally, the place of this tool with respect to flight test activities is discussed.

International Forum on Aeroelasticity and Structural Dynamics, 2005, München

Conference Paper

englisch

21,0 x 29,7 cm, 11 Seiten

DGLR-Bericht, 2005, 2005-04, International Forum on Aeroelasticity and Structural Dynamics 2005; S.1-11; 2005; Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt - Lilienthal-Oberth e.V., Bonn

NA

in getr. Zählung;

flight control

Bibliothek

2005