Advanced In-flight Testing at DLR

Kurzfassung

Within the EU-Project AIM (Advanced In-flight Measurement Techniques) the DLR is involved into several flight tests concerning optical measurements of flow parameters with Pressure Sensitive Paint (PSP), InfraRed Technique (IRT), Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and Background Oriented Schlieren technique (BOS) as well as deformation of aircraft structures with the Image Pattern Correlation Technique (IPCT). During 2008, which is the second year of the project, flight trials with the DLR owned aircrafts VfW 614 ATTAS, Eurocopter EC-135 ACT/FHS and the MBB Bo105 are planned as well as a flight test with an external owned Piaggio P180. On the VfW614 ATTAS PSP and IRT will be used to measure the surface pressure and temperature distribution in-flight. The aircraft will also be used for ground based measurements of wake vortices by means of BOS and PIV at Flughafen Braunschweig. Both techniques will also be used to measure the blade tip vortices shedded by the main rotor blades of the MBB Bo105 during a ground test scheduled for February 2008. The BOS measuring system will be integrated into the flying helicopter too. On the Eurocopter EC-135 ACT/FHS the deformation of the main rotor blades will be measured in-flight by means of IPCT. Therefore a ground test with the helicopter and a test on the Eurocopter Whirltower had been performed to check the performance of the stereoscopic measuring system. The deformation measurement technique IPCT will also be used to investigate the deformation of the propeller blades of a Piaggio P180 under different flight conditions and to perform in-flight flutter investigations with this aircraft. During the presentation at the MOTAR meeting the measuring systems which will be used for the tests mentioned above will be described briefly.