Operating Performance Evaluation of Actuator System for Subsonic GA Wind Tunnel Testing

Abstract:
JAXA has been conducting research and development of the on-board safety avionics technology to prevent turbulence-induced aircraft accidents (Safe Avio) that uses Doppler light detection and ranging (LIDAR) to detect the turbulence in advance and the preview controller to utilize the turbulent velocity information measured by LIDAR to attenuate the aircraft acceleration in turbulence. The preview controller should be validated by a subsonic GA (Gust Alleviation) wind tunnel testing as the first step. The high performance actuator system, which drives the control surfaces to alleviate the gust influence on the aircraft, is required to realize the wind tunnel testing. So far the design study, prototyping and performance evaluation of the piezoelectric actuator system are carried out successfully as the first stage. Then, the bench test is carried out to evaluate the operability of the actuator system with an isolated configuration and demonstrates that the aileron follows the simulated control command with very little time lag. Finally, it is demonstrated by the integrated configuration test with the wind tunnel testing set up that the actuator system can achieve the aileron operation capability to realize the gust response and mitigation algorithm during the wind tunnel test.