Smart Sensor Usage in Jet Engine Testing

摘要

The installation of a jet engine for testing in an altitude test cell requires a number of electronic andmechanical connections to the engine. Presently, in order to configure the test facility to acquiremeasured data, a multitude of aerodynamic pressure lines (up to 600) and electrical cables forinstrumentation measurement and excitation (up to 800) are routed through patch panels to pressurescanners, power supply/signal conditioners, analog-to-digital (A/D) systems, and acquisition systems forprocessing, display, recording, analysis, and transmission of the data. The process is manpower intensivein both setup and configuration control. The use of smart sensors with calibrations and measurementinformation on the sensors plus consolidation of all sensor outputs before they exit the engine test standoffers the opportunity to reduce the number of connections for measured data to one or at most a fewwires. Since the measurement information is stored with the sensor, the probability of configuring theinstrumentation system incorrectly is also reduced. A process called Snap-In/Snap-Out (SISO) ispresented, describing the use of smart sensors to reduce test facility/engine instrumentation setup time,reduce costs of setup and configuration management, and eliminate the present front-end dataacquisition components and their associated maintenance costs.