Aircraft Monitoring Experience
IFDMU
ACRA CONTROL’s IFDMU concept is a functional evolution of the FDAU. It utilizes intelligent data management and distribution to collect the required parametric data and process aircraft video and audio data and route selected content to the FDR/CVR, cockpit voice/video data recorder (CV/VDR) and QAR. Wireless connectivity (via Cell phone, WiFi/WiMax and SatCom) facilitates remote downloading of the data for civil aviation applications.
Naval Helicopter
An ACRA CONTROL FDAU was configured to feed conditioned data to Multi-Purpose Flight Data Recorders (MPFR) fitted to a fleet of in-service naval rotorcraft. The FDAU processes and conditions data from multiple channels of ARINC-429 avionics bus, discrete inputs and strain gauges while outputting a single ARINC-573/717 data stream to the FDR. The FDAU/FDR system starts acquiring and recording data as soon as the aircraft is powered up.
HC-130H Center Wing Box Monitoring System
A Lockheed-Martin HC-130H operator required a data acquisition system to help validate baseline spectra and stress/load ratios and to record environmental data during flight operations. This analysis informs future comparisons e.g. correlation to environmentally accelerated cracking and general corrosion. Both digital and analog signals were fed into an ACRA CONTROL data acquisition system where A/D conversion and signal conditioning were performed. This data was then saved to a removable CF card for transfer into the client’s suite of programs for analysis. In another OLM program, a C-130J operator installed a distributed data acquisition and recording system to collect data from hundreds of strain gauges with multiple aircraft parameters from 10% of the in-service fleet.