Development of a Rotating Camera for In-flight Measurements of Aircraft Propeller Deformation by Means of IPCT

Abstract

The efficiency of a propeller is directly affected by the shape of the propeller blades, that are deformed due to the loads during flight operation. Therefore the measurement of the real shape of the blades is of great interest. A powerful optical measuring method called Image Pattern Correlation Technique (IPCT) enables the flight test engineers to perform such measurements in a non-intrusiveway. It has already been applied to in-flight investigations of aircraft wing and propeller deformations, but only for one fixed propeller phase angle. To extend the optical access to 360◦ a new rotating 3-D image acquisition system placed in front of the examined propeller has been designed. The measurement technique IPCT as well as the development of the rotating camera system are described in this chapter.