Overview
This proposal was the continuation of the already realised Reflectometry and Shadow Casting work from the first part of the CleanSky/BLADE Program for the in-flight measurement of local wing surface deformations.
The main aims were:
- Manufacturing and test of the already designed instrumentation;
- Optimisation (and partial redesign) of the hardware in order to reach the necessary performance and to stabilise these performances;
- Implementation of a local topographic wing marking that has no negative influence on the laminar air flow (fluorescent markings 5 to 10µm thickness);
- Optimisation of the already designed software (stability, illumination tolerance, vibration tolerance, integration of the markings, compliance with wing convexity, compliance with bending and torsion of the wing at changing load);
- Support during integration of the instrumentation in the aircraft;
- Calibration before flight;
- Fine tuning of hard- and software for difficulties during the flight campaign;
- Development and full implementation of an on-board real-time data processing/analysis tool for first diagnostic during the flight;
- Design and manufacturing of the ground station for differed time data processing/analysis;
- Supply of the necessary consumables (SSD mobile drives) for Data transfer between Cabin computer and ground station (evaluation and analysis).
Funding
Results
The main objectives of the reflectometry wing surface measurement system were in-flight synchronous collection of the images from 16 cameras. To meet the light conditions during flight a special illumination had been developed. The acquired images from the camera modules observing the wing surfaces were being transferred (by an arial distribution unit / ADU) to the cabin computers, operated during flight from the flight test engineer. The user interface for the flight test engineer was designed and programmed to monitor and control the complete airborne system.
The System has been developed and delivered as a complete stand-alone measurement system. It was featuring all hardware sensors in the wing tip pod as well as in the aircraft cabin and the required equipment on ground. The cabin computers were running a special software to control the system and collect the data from all the cameras simultaneously meeting the requirements of the flight test engineer during flight. The ground computer was running the post processing software for reflectometry and shadow casting measurement and data/result transfer to an archive system.