Final Report Summary - HIGHPMAAC (High Performance Modular Architecture of Acquisition and Control command system dedicated to test Electrical systems for Aeronautics)
Executive Summary:
The HighPMAAC project consisted in designing, developing and validating the first version of a new High Performance Modular architecture of Acquisition and Control Command system dedicated to test Electrical Systems for Aeronautics in an efficient way.
This new architecture allows to perform tests in an “independent way” at the Equipment Level and is also able to perform tests at System Level, providing a full integrated test system. Distributed and synchronized front-ends technology is used, with high capabilities in terms of synchronized data acquisition rate, simulation, synchronized stimulation, modularity and adaptability.
The architecture is based on modular subsystems allowing operators to adapt easily the front-ends to the characteristics and needs of each equipment. Synchronization mechanisms and monitoring at high data rate allow performing secure integration tests with high quality of acquired data, for a fine exploitation of electrical behaviour propagation.
The whole system is installed on the Electrical Test Bench of the ECO-Design ITD and constitutes the Control and command system of this ETB. Associated to the dedicated wiring, it is possible to supervise tests of Aircraft representative power networks. It is also important to note that this distributed system includes simulation capabilities, implementing "Hardware In The Loop" possibilities and may address other application requiring combination of Supervision, Monitoring, high performance Data acquisition and exploitation.
This project lead to the development of the first version of the system by defining new hardware and software architecture of test system in an iterative way; by defining and evaluating this architecture toward the requirements. Difficulties lying in the Data synchronisation between the different front-ends and in high flow data rate were coped with.
Finally, the objectives of
- Modularity of the platform and openness to future new systems
- Efficiency of the platform for the electrical tests in aeronautics domain are reached, contributing to the objective as reducing development cycle of aeronautical products. Moreover, as a high-level performance system development and lessons learnt during the development, the consortium increased competencies and expertise of their teams and -by relying on this workforce-, expect
- to increase its implication into global aeronautical world,
- to increase its associated European workforce
- to increase its capabilities of services to the European industries
In parallel with improving works that have to be done on the solution, given the obtained results and performance capabilities of the product, it was decided to promote the product resulting from the HighPMAAC project for the future test platforms of our customers.
Project Context and Objectives:
Improvement made in aeronautical components and technologies, leads to the emergence of new equipment and new A/C electrical architectures, going to a more electrical aircraft. The interaction of the different electrical equipment can have some consequence on the quality of the on board electrical sub network and its stability.
A more electric aircraft requires understanding well and mastering these facts. This requires to have ground test installation to simulate Aircraft power network, and data acquisition tools able to capture the kind of phenomenon associated to these new "on board" architecture and equipment (e.g. transient pulses, HF signal components, default propagation, system monitoring, …).
Increasing the number of I/O channels on a centralized control system or adding basic test means, is not enough to provide an effective global test system.
The HighPMAAC project has the objective to design, develop and validate a new High Performance Modular architecture of Acquisition and Control Command system dedicated to test Electrical Systems for Aeronautics in an efficient way allowing tests at Equipment Level and also at System level with possibility to easily use or re-use test features such as Hardware configurations, test preparation, test Sequences, MMI, safety procedures, ...
The analysis of the needs and evolutions of the "Tests" within the aeronautical market leads us to explore solutions based on modular and distributed architecture of test systems.
As main objectives the project :
1) will define an open platform, able to tackle the current needs of the aeronautical market and ready to evolve toward the future needs, by accommodating new material. The modular approach will also ease the long term evolution of the solution, keeping it "up-to-date" by integrating new modules as they appear. This is the guarantee of a long life cycle product, in touch with the life cycle of aeronautical products.
2) will propose to the Aircraft and subsystem manufacturer a mean to reduce development and qualification time and therefore the time to market of their systems
3) will propose a new efficient validation tool of electrical sub-networks architectures for aircraft applications.
Project Results:
Results consists in software modules running on supervisor in standard environment and in software modules running on real-time platform.
On standard environment, modules roles are for the following functionalities at local level or at system level (i.e. the whole platform including all the front-ends) :
- Hardware configuration preparation
- Test preparation
- Test supervision of the complete ETB and management in real time (visualization in "near" real time)
- Test analysis in "Quick mode”
- Test analysis in "Full mode"
- Stimulation capabilities, with stimuli synchronization between all the LCC.
- MMI for test preparation and test execution
- Logbook
On the real-time front ends modules roles are for the following functionalities:
- Control Front-end
- Execute tests sequence / stimuli
- Archive data
- Run HMI
- Run models
Those functionalities rely on data management and synchronization principles that were set up in the frame of this R&D project. Application on the Electrical Test Bench gave birth to the first software issue of the solution that was also validated in terms of performance on this bench.
Potential Impact:
Realization of this project by the consortium increased competencies and technological level of the consortium teams leading them to promote and propose its services on other project implying First rank European technological companies in aeronautical domain.
The developed concepts were applied on two other projects in Europe leading us to provide to our customers technological leading-edge test systems, fitted to the needs of new aeronautical products.
Once defined and evaluated, our solution and the related products were described and promoted to several technical conferences and events related to the aeronautics and Test & Measurement. Those events were attended by leading European actors in the domain of electrical systems for Aircraft. Members of the consortium also attended some business conventions where flyers, presentation panels and slide show were displayed.
In parallel with improving works that have to be done on the future product, given the obtained results and performance capabilities of the product, it was decided to promote the product resulting from the HighPMAAC project for the future test platforms of our customer. Moreover, the "lesson learnt" experiences and improved technological acquired by our team will lead to increase our capabilities of services to the European industries. Thus the solution is promoted by our commercial team for use on aeronautical or transportation projects where test bench are required.
List of Websites:
Contacts :
Guy SAUNER...............CLEMESSY Aeronautics sales Director, Tel +33 3 89 32 37 28 / g.sauner@clemessy.com
Alain COICAULT..........CLEMESSY Business Unit Manager, Tel: +33 5 34 28 10 17 / a.coicault@clemessy.fr
Pierre ROTH .............. CLEMESSY Expert A2C Product, Tel: +33 3 89 32 35 52 / p.roth@clemessy.fr
Stefano SERRA...........TESEO Chief Executive Officer, Tel: +39 011 99 41 935 / s.serra@teseo.net
Philippe BEAUCOUR...NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS Area Sames Manager, Tel: +33 1 57 66 24 24 / philippe.baucour@ni.com
The HighPMAAC project consisted in designing, developing and validating the first version of a new High Performance Modular architecture of Acquisition and Control Command system dedicated to test Electrical Systems for Aeronautics in an efficient way.
This new architecture allows to perform tests in an “independent way” at the Equipment Level and is also able to perform tests at System Level, providing a full integrated test system. Distributed and synchronized front-ends technology is used, with high capabilities in terms of synchronized data acquisition rate, simulation, synchronized stimulation, modularity and adaptability.
The architecture is based on modular subsystems allowing operators to adapt easily the front-ends to the characteristics and needs of each equipment. Synchronization mechanisms and monitoring at high data rate allow performing secure integration tests with high quality of acquired data, for a fine exploitation of electrical behaviour propagation.
The whole system is installed on the Electrical Test Bench of the ECO-Design ITD and constitutes the Control and command system of this ETB. Associated to the dedicated wiring, it is possible to supervise tests of Aircraft representative power networks. It is also important to note that this distributed system includes simulation capabilities, implementing "Hardware In The Loop" possibilities and may address other application requiring combination of Supervision, Monitoring, high performance Data acquisition and exploitation.
This project lead to the development of the first version of the system by defining new hardware and software architecture of test system in an iterative way; by defining and evaluating this architecture toward the requirements. Difficulties lying in the Data synchronisation between the different front-ends and in high flow data rate were coped with.
Finally, the objectives of
- Modularity of the platform and openness to future new systems
- Efficiency of the platform for the electrical tests in aeronautics domain are reached, contributing to the objective as reducing development cycle of aeronautical products. Moreover, as a high-level performance system development and lessons learnt during the development, the consortium increased competencies and expertise of their teams and -by relying on this workforce-, expect
- to increase its implication into global aeronautical world,
- to increase its associated European workforce
- to increase its capabilities of services to the European industries
In parallel with improving works that have to be done on the solution, given the obtained results and performance capabilities of the product, it was decided to promote the product resulting from the HighPMAAC project for the future test platforms of our customers.
Project Context and Objectives:
Improvement made in aeronautical components and technologies, leads to the emergence of new equipment and new A/C electrical architectures, going to a more electrical aircraft. The interaction of the different electrical equipment can have some consequence on the quality of the on board electrical sub network and its stability.
A more electric aircraft requires understanding well and mastering these facts. This requires to have ground test installation to simulate Aircraft power network, and data acquisition tools able to capture the kind of phenomenon associated to these new "on board" architecture and equipment (e.g. transient pulses, HF signal components, default propagation, system monitoring, …).
Increasing the number of I/O channels on a centralized control system or adding basic test means, is not enough to provide an effective global test system.
The HighPMAAC project has the objective to design, develop and validate a new High Performance Modular architecture of Acquisition and Control Command system dedicated to test Electrical Systems for Aeronautics in an efficient way allowing tests at Equipment Level and also at System level with possibility to easily use or re-use test features such as Hardware configurations, test preparation, test Sequences, MMI, safety procedures, ...
The analysis of the needs and evolutions of the "Tests" within the aeronautical market leads us to explore solutions based on modular and distributed architecture of test systems.
As main objectives the project :
1) will define an open platform, able to tackle the current needs of the aeronautical market and ready to evolve toward the future needs, by accommodating new material. The modular approach will also ease the long term evolution of the solution, keeping it "up-to-date" by integrating new modules as they appear. This is the guarantee of a long life cycle product, in touch with the life cycle of aeronautical products.
2) will propose to the Aircraft and subsystem manufacturer a mean to reduce development and qualification time and therefore the time to market of their systems
3) will propose a new efficient validation tool of electrical sub-networks architectures for aircraft applications.
Project Results:
Results consists in software modules running on supervisor in standard environment and in software modules running on real-time platform.
On standard environment, modules roles are for the following functionalities at local level or at system level (i.e. the whole platform including all the front-ends) :
- Hardware configuration preparation
- Test preparation
- Test supervision of the complete ETB and management in real time (visualization in "near" real time)
- Test analysis in "Quick mode”
- Test analysis in "Full mode"
- Stimulation capabilities, with stimuli synchronization between all the LCC.
- MMI for test preparation and test execution
- Logbook
On the real-time front ends modules roles are for the following functionalities:
- Control Front-end
- Execute tests sequence / stimuli
- Archive data
- Run HMI
- Run models
Those functionalities rely on data management and synchronization principles that were set up in the frame of this R&D project. Application on the Electrical Test Bench gave birth to the first software issue of the solution that was also validated in terms of performance on this bench.
Potential Impact:
Realization of this project by the consortium increased competencies and technological level of the consortium teams leading them to promote and propose its services on other project implying First rank European technological companies in aeronautical domain.
The developed concepts were applied on two other projects in Europe leading us to provide to our customers technological leading-edge test systems, fitted to the needs of new aeronautical products.
Once defined and evaluated, our solution and the related products were described and promoted to several technical conferences and events related to the aeronautics and Test & Measurement. Those events were attended by leading European actors in the domain of electrical systems for Aircraft. Members of the consortium also attended some business conventions where flyers, presentation panels and slide show were displayed.
In parallel with improving works that have to be done on the future product, given the obtained results and performance capabilities of the product, it was decided to promote the product resulting from the HighPMAAC project for the future test platforms of our customer. Moreover, the "lesson learnt" experiences and improved technological acquired by our team will lead to increase our capabilities of services to the European industries. Thus the solution is promoted by our commercial team for use on aeronautical or transportation projects where test bench are required.
List of Websites:
Contacts :
Guy SAUNER...............CLEMESSY Aeronautics sales Director, Tel +33 3 89 32 37 28 / g.sauner@clemessy.com
Alain COICAULT..........CLEMESSY Business Unit Manager, Tel: +33 5 34 28 10 17 / a.coicault@clemessy.fr
Pierre ROTH .............. CLEMESSY Expert A2C Product, Tel: +33 3 89 32 35 52 / p.roth@clemessy.fr
Stefano SERRA...........TESEO Chief Executive Officer, Tel: +39 011 99 41 935 / s.serra@teseo.net
Philippe BEAUCOUR...NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS Area Sames Manager, Tel: +33 1 57 66 24 24 / philippe.baucour@ni.com
