Defence & Security
The Directorate of Technical Airworthiness
(DTA) undertook the responsibility of providing the
CC-130 aircraft fleet with an Operational Loads Monitoring
(OLM) capability. The main purpose of the OLM program
was to provide a rational method for a usage-based
inspection scheduling, in order to reduce maintenance
costs while ensuring safety of flight.
Under contract from DND, Martec Limited was assigned
the responsibility for developing transfer functions,
which are used to convert aircraft flight parameters
into local stress sequences. The data used for validating
the transfer functions were obtained from flight test.
In cooperation with another partner, Martec was responsible
for preparing an instrumentation plan as well as a
list of measurements to be recorded during the flight
test. The 72 channel instrumentation package included
54 strain gauges located at critical locations on
the wing, 9 accelerometers spread along the wing and
fuselage, and rate gyros for pitch and roll motions.
In addition to the instrumentation channels, data
from the current OLM system were made available for
validation. Martec was also responsible for providing
DND with a flight test matrix detailing the appropriate
maneuvers to be performed during 3 sorties of approximately
2 hours each. The 3 test matrices each included maneuvers
to evaluate wing loading (symmetric pull-ups &
rolling pull-outs), dynamic modes (control pulse inputs)
and gust response (trimmed flight into turbulence),
all performed at various airspeeds and altitudes.
Because of the test program‘s relatively modest
size, it was essential for Martec to include some
amount of redundancy into the matrix in order to account
for the possibility of corrupt data for one of the
sorties.
Following completion of the flight test, the instrumentation
data collected was used to validate the transfer functions,
which received the recorded flight parameters as input.
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