DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN AIRCRAFT GAS TURBINE ENGINE TEST SYSTEM

Abstract

Because of the significant importance of the gas-turbine engines as it is the core of the aircraft, the engine health status should be tested periodically. Testing methodologies are needed to conduct the engine tests required as a part of airworthiness certification. In this project a data acquisition system was developed as a gas turbine engine testing system. This system was developed to monitor the engine parameters to determine its condition and to control the engine starting components according to specific sequence. A PIC microcontroller from Microchip was used as the heart of the data acquisition system. Internal analog to digital converters acquired data from the analog signals . The analog signals gathered from temperature, tachogenerator, throttle, and pressure sensors will be transformed into digital format and then the corresponding data will be sent serially to the PC through the microcontroller serial port. After the data was received by the PC, visual basic program was designed to convert, scale, and display these data . After the data was displayed the system will analyze and compare these data with standard values according to the current position of the throttle. If there is an abnormal values the system will provide automatically a trouble shooting list in order to determine where the problem is. The developed test system had been applied successfully and the results are accurate, reliable and acceptable.