Copyright, Data Science Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Page 1 of 5

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1 Characterization of the Next Generation Aircraft Fuel Pump By Ben Rayner and Gregory Cala, PhD Project Consultant Data Science Automation United States of America Category: Aerospace/Defense Products Used: Realtime Control System PXI-8170 Running RealTime OS PXI-8211 Ethernet Module PXI-8421/4 RS485 interface card PXI-6030E MIO card PXI-6704 Analog Output Card PXI-1000B Chassis 5B01 16 channel Signal conditioning backplane 5B40 Signal conditioning units 5B41 Signal conditioning units Data Acquisition and User interface system PXI-8176 Running Windows 2000 PXI-8421/4 RS485 interface card LabVIEW 6.1 RT PXI-6040E MIO Card PXI-1000B Chassis SCXI Slot chassis SCXI-1102B 32 channel signal conditioning SCXI-1102C 32 channel signal conditioning The Challenge: Develop an automated data acquisition and test system that incorporates a jet-engine simulation to characterize a developmental Ultra-Efficient Fuel Delivery System (UEFDS). In order to test this unique fuel pump, a test system had to be designed, developed and demonstrated. The test system was required to dynamically simulate the behavior of a jet engine flying through a range of operating conditions as described by altitude, speed (machnumber), and throttle position (power lever angle). Of the more than 100 channels of data to be monitored and logged, 12 channels were needed by the control logic required to determine the control of the four outputs: Pump Drive Speed, Fuel Heat Exchanger valve position, Back Pressure valve position, and Actuation Flow valve position. The Solution: Using LabVIEW RT we developed code to control the four outputs. Additionally, a second LabVIEW application was developed for a Windows 2000 system to display and log all 100 analog input channels of data at 1000 samples/sec along with at least 30 information channels received from the electronic Control Module (ECM) via RS-485. Abstract: Two National Instruments PXI systems are used to control and monitor the UEFDS testcell. The four PID control loops on the RT system along with the engine simulation model execute 100 times per second and read twelve input channels which are over sampled 10X. The RT system controls three valves and the pump drive speed. The LabVIEW Windows application on the second PXI system allows the user to monitor and log all 100 channels of data collected at 1000 samples/sec through the SCXI DAQ System, the 30 parameters collected on the RS485 network connected to the unit under test, and the UDP status messages from the RT system. Copyright, Data Science Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Page 1 of 5

2 Deterministic Control. The LabVIEW RT system monitors the 12 critical channels, also at 1000 samples/sec. Signal conditioning for these signals were provided by 5B series modules. The data from these channels is buffered and averaged 100 times per second. Figure 1. The Real-Time Main User Inteface A hardware timed loop executes 100 times per second, calculating and updating the four outputs. The math necessary for the simulation is all calculated in LabVIEW and contains four PID loops, 9 rate limiters, a derivative and 12 look-up tables. Figure 2: The real time loop that executes 100 times per second and calculates the 4 output parameters. Copyright, Data Science Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Page 2 of 5

3 The global variables are used to monitor interim values during the refinement phase and to pass data to a second loop. The second loop executes 100 times a second and it passes critical information to the fuel pump over the same RS-485 network that the windows system uses to monitor the status of the fuel pump. The system also contains a simulate mode to enable the application to run on a regular desktop computer for testing and development purposes without an RT system and without data acquisition hardware. PID Control. It was a significant challenge to get the PID controls to work reliably and fast. Without over-sampling, the bit-noise in the analog inputs made the derivative unusable. The automatic calculation of the delta t in the PID VIs also caused problems. Although there was no hardware jitter, a software jitter of 1ms would cause a 10% change in delta t at our loop-rate of 100 Hz. Oversampling 10X and explicitly providing the delta-t helped stabilize the system transient response, although the noise on the signal still made use of the derivative term difficult. Figure 3. The Windows interface to the RT dynamic configuration parameters Copyright, Data Science Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Page 3 of 5

4 RS-485 Communication. Communication with the ECM posed significant challenges. The data generated by the unit under test was too much for the RT system to analyze and log, yet the commands needed to be sent to the unit deterministically. The implementation used an RS-485 network. This enabled the RT system to write commands to the ECM, while the windows system would read the responses and log the data. Because the test article was a one of a kind developmental system, wiring and naming conventions had to be developed by the members of the support team from three different companies. Once the protocol conventions were negotiated, the RS-485 proved to be quite robust. Even at the wrong baud-rate and the wrong polarity, we were still receiving data! Data Management. Enormous amounts of data were generated in response to manual triggers. Thirty seconds of data from all channels were buffered to allow pre-trigger binary data to be stored or displayed at anytime during transient events. Snapshots provided a more manageable data storage mechanism for steady state conditions whereby data was averaged over a configurable time interval. Utilities were provided to concatenate multiple logs or snapshots and convert them to ASCII format. Figure 4. The Application configuration page. Copyright, Data Science Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Page 4 of 5

5 Figure 5. One of the data monitoring pages permitted channel selection to be made on the fly. Conclusion. The powerful features of Measurement and Automation Explorer allowed us to test and calibrate each channel independently without the need for any customized software. Distinguishing hardware problems from software problems was therefore greatly simplified. The rapid development capabilities of LabVIEW in combination with the robustness of the PXI system allowed us to create a reliable system in a very short time-frame. The powerful testing and debugging capabilities of LabVIEW RT provided the assurance that we would be able to make the deadline and we did. Copyright, Data Science Automation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Page 5 of 5