In designing a new system for a modern fighter aircraft, our team was tasked with characterizing the vibration environment in the nose of the fighter. This system would have to be small, light, and have as little interaction with the aircraft as possible. Time constraints necessitated using a collection of Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) systems that still had to operate in a fighter aircraft environment.

System Objective

The Mass Body Data Collection System collects vibration data from tri-axial accelerometers mounted on a mass body at selected points. The mass bodies can be any shape and are formed to reflect actual equipment that is yet to be designed. The mass bodies are then mounted in the test vehicle and stressed as the finished equipment would be stressed.

Basic Mass Bodies

Collected data is stored in an inexpensive COTS mini PC mounted along with the mass body during a vibration test. A mass body is defined as an object that has the same mass and size as the actual final production equipment that will be mounted on a test vehicle. The tests are done as a part of an early risk reduction program that reduces or eliminates problems created by vibrations generated by equipment in actual use. In the system below uses a Marinus Argonaut mini computer and a Teletronics Technology Corporation (TTC) encoder / multiplexer chassis to gather sensor accelerometer data into buffered data blocks passed over a USB connection.


Basic Mass Body Collection System

A typical use for this system is to record accelerometer data and process it through a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) filter to generate frequency response plots for a given test period of time.


Sample Accelerometer and Processed Vibration Data

Analysis of the collected three-dimensional accelerations provides a characterization of the vibration environment of the equipment represented by the mass body.


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