ZFL has designed, built, installed, and certified an experimental IBC system for the CH-53G, which has been extensively tested with support of the German Federal Armed Forces Technical and Airworthiness Center for Aircraft (WTD 61). Based on the experience gained during the development of several IBC systems for different wind tunnel and flight test applications, ZFL has manufactured all major hardware components as well as the control hard- and software for this system. The CH-53G testbed, the flight test infrastructure, and the crew are provided by the WTD 61. This paper first describes the motivation of this technology demonstration program and then gives a brief overview of the IBC system layout. It further presents major findings gathered from data recorded during the open loop flight test campaign. The maximum authority used during the tests was 0.67° blade pitch amplitude. Although just single harmonic inputs have been applied so far, the evaluation of that data has already shown a remarkable high efficiency of IBC in reducing vibrations, BVI noise, pitch link loads and rotor power consumption on this aircraft. In the last part of the paper, the follow-on closed loop campaign is discussed.
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