HALO flight test with instrumented under-wing stores for aeroelastic and load measurements in the DLR project iLOADS

Kurzfassung

HALO (High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft), the atmospheric research aircraft of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), can be equipped with under-wing stores at different wing positions to transport scientific instruments for atmospheric research. The particle measurement system (PMS) carrier is such an external store which can carry three instruments at the same time per wing. Any modifications on an aircraft must be tested numerically and experimentally to ensure the structural integrity of the aircraft for all flight conditions. Load and flutter analyses can be validated with flight test data. For flight test, the aircraft and the under-wing stores of HALO must be equipped with acceleration and strain sensors. To reduce flight test time it is necessary to make quick decisions during the flight test. Therefore the DLR Institute of Aeroelasticity in Göttingen has developed a real-time analysis procedure for online identification of modal parameters like eigenfrequencies, damping ratios and mode shapes. These parameters vary with flight conditions and are necessary to analyse the aeroelastic stability of the system. The department of loads analysis and aeroelastic design and the department of structural dynamics and system identification have tested the newly developed procedure in 14 flight hours on the HALO. A network of three distributed data acquisition modules enabled the recording of the flight test instrumentation with 51 accelerometers and 16 strain gauge bridges. The measured data were distributed online on several computers where the newly developed software was implemented, allowing an instantaneous analysis of the structural dynamics behaviour and loads in flight. This paper provides an overview of the conducted flight vibration tests with HALO. It also shows the capability of the newly developed online monitoring system for aeroelastic identification.