Vibration Testing: Motion Based Flight Simulator


Project Overview:

Conduct motion-based flight simulator vibration testing

Customer:

Flight Safety Visual Systems

Services Performed:

PEI developed a test plan, mounted instrumentation, ran tests and recorded data, processed the data, and provided conclusions and recommendations.

Test Plan Development:

  • Defined test objective  
  • Provided description of flight simulator and the areas of interest
  • Developed the test setup and hardware
    • For vibration testing 14 triaxial accelerometers utilized
    • National Instruments (NI) data acquisition system with chassis, input modules, and synchronization modules
    • Dell M6700 laptop running NI Signal Express 2015 for data acquisition and processing 
  • Developed accelerometer/signal map and test configurations
  • Generated accelerometer location map based on peak deflections from system finite element model
  • Summarized tests performed

Instrumentation Mounting and Testing:

  • Set up data acquisition system at customer site
  • Documented accelerometer signal map and mounting locations on flight simulator 
  • Performed vibration tests and monitor data during acquisition
  • Post-processed a limited portion of data immediately following test to ensure quality

Vibration Data Processing:

  • Plotted all data using NI Signal Express software with accelerations, approximately 200 plots 
  • Processed the reference response at the motion system knuckles to characterize the drive signal
  • Developed calculation for relative deflection between display mirror and the inner support frames 

Formal Test Report:

  • After processing and reviewing the data, PEI developed a series of observations
  • Recommendations were provided to the customer for design modifications 
  • Generated test report

 

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