New tool tests reliability of electric aircraft systems
Pushing towards more-electric aircraft, the industry has introduced new equipment and electrical architectures to replace on-board hydraulic and pneumatic systems. However, interactions between the different electrical equipment may impact on the quality of the on-board electrical subnetwork and its stability. Within HIGHPMAAC (High performance modular architecture of acquisition and control command system dedicated to test electrical systems for aeronautics), researchers developed an integrated test system to optimise the tests of future power networks and components. The newly developed data acquisition and control command system allows testing at equipment and system levels. The system is based on an open architecture design that can accommodate different equipment. Development of modular subsystems enables operators to easily adapt front-ends to different equipment. Synchronisation between local control command systems and signal monitoring at high data rates should allow performing secure integration tests with high-quality data. HIGHPMAAC's whole system is validated through an electrical test bench that also includes hardware-in-the-loop simulations to validate aircraft power networks. The test bench also serves in other applications that require a combination of supervision, monitoring and high-performance data acquisition. With the first version of the HIGHPMAAC system, the aeronautics industry benefits from a unique test system for use in research into more-electric aircraft. The new tool is expected to improve on-board system reliability and shorten the time to market.
