CERTIFICATION, GROUND AND FLIGHT TESTING OF AN EXPERIMENTAL IBC SYSTEM FOR THE CH-53G HELICOPTER

ZFL has designed, built, installed, and certified an experimental IBC system for the CH-53G, which is currently being 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 designed and 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 gives a brief overview of the IBC system layout and then describes the process of qualifying, certifying, and flight testing this hardware. It further presents some of the data recorded during the first phase of the ongoing open loop flight test campaign. Although the authority was still restricted to relatively small values at the beginning and only single harmonic inputs have been applied so far, the evaluation of that data has already shown a remarkable high effectiveness of IBC in reducing vibrations on this aircraft. Since the data are of very good consistency it was undertaken to estimate optimum mixed frequency inputs for chosen flight conditions. In the last part of the paper, the follow-on closed loop campaign is briefly outlined, and finally, an outlook on the development of an IBC retrofit kit is given.