The Development and the Evaluation of a Quasi-Real Time Decision Aid Tool

Abstract

In an experimental flight test campaign, the usage of a real time Ground Telemetry System (GTS) provides mandatory support for three basic essential services: a) Safety storage of Flight Tests Instrumentation (FTI) data, in the occurrence of a critical aircraft failure; b) Monitoring of critical flight safety parameters to avoid the occurrence of accidents; and c) Monitoring of selected parameters that validates all tests points. At the operational side the test ranges typically works in two phases: a) In real time where the GTS crew performs test validation and test point selection with Telemetry data; and b) In post mission where the engineering crew performs data analysis and reduction with airborne recorded data. This process is time consuming because recorded data has to be downloaded, converted to Engineering Units (EU), sliced, filtered and processed. The main reason for the usage of this less efficient process relies in the fact that the real time Telemetry data is less reliable as compared to recorded data (i.e. it contains more noise and some dropouts). With the introduction of new technologies (i.e. i-NET) the telemetry link could be very reliable, so the GTS could perform data reduction analysis immediately after the receipt of all valid tests points, while the aircraft is still flying in a quasi-real time environment. To achieve this goal the Brazilian Flight Test Group (GEEV) along with EMBRAER and with the support of Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP) started the development of a series of Decision Aid Tools that performs data reduction analysis into the GTS in quasi-real time. This paper presents the development and the evaluation of a tool used in Air Data System Calibration Flight Tests Campaign. The application receives the Telemetry data over either a TCP/IP or a SCRAMnet Network, performs data analysis and test point validation in real time and when all points are gathered it performs the data reduction analysis and automatically creates HTML formatted tests reports. The tool evaluation was carried out with the instruction flights for the 2009 Brazilian Flight Test School (CEV). The results present a great efficiency gain for the overall Flight Test Campaign.