Before being allowed to fly again, an engine must be tested in conditions as close as possible to real life circumstances and must pass a performance test on the Zephyr test bench, where many parameters are checked including thrust, temperature at different points on the engine, pressure, and vibration levels.
The bench will of course prepare for this crucial stage and, in the case of vibration, the correct balance will be checked and adjusted at two points on the engine and measured by permanently mounted accelerometers. These sensors continuously record the vibratory displacement during aircraft operation, which must remain within a very precise tolerance level. Wishing to go further with these vibration measurements and to gain more expertise in this field, Ivan Rouesné, Zephyr’s Dubanc Manager, contacted HBK.
After analyzing the customer’s requirements, Philippe Potereau, HBK’s Business Development Manager, initially proposed to temporarily add a parallel system dedicated to repetitive vibration measurements into the Zephyr bench – that is the Tescia repetitive testing system designed in close collaboration with users from the aerospace industry for the measurement of rotating machines. A complete system, which includes Brüel & Kjær’s renowned LAN‐XI data acquisition hardware and a dedicated PC, can be used in a small production environment with just one user, or in a larger system with multiple test and monitoring seats, guaranteeing immediate and reliable access to data by several teams simultaneously.