MCS’s pneumatic test facility has recently completed process of being upgraded with capital expenditures exceeding 4.0 Million dollars. The upgrades included the addition of a new high pressure compressor, four storage tanks that added 11,200 cubic feet of air capacity and a high efficiency closed loop cooling tower to keep the high pressure compressors from over heating. In addition, a high flow blower that can flow 3000 CFM of air at 12 psig was added to simulate fan air that is typically used to cool down the bleed air. Moreover, the electric infrastructure was upgraded with an underground distribution network and an added capacity of 3,000 Amperes for a total of 5,000 Amperes. With this added capacity, a flow rate of 300 ppm at 300 psig can be sustained for a total of one hour in a blow down situation. With both high pressure compressors running, a flow rate of 300 ppm at 300 psig can be maintained for seven hours. This flow capacity will allows MCS to conduct development testing on high flow pneumatic systems on the premises.

In addition to the high capacity facility upgrades, Meggitt’s pneumatic test facility is comprised of 13 individual test drops plumbed to access the 600 psig air held in storage tanks. For elevated test conditions there are two natural gas heaters with the required control circuitry provide up to 1200 degree Fahrenheit air to selected test stations. Other test stations are dedicated to room temperature air testing.

In the MCS Coventry facility a secondary pneumatic flow station is available also capable of flowing representative mass flows at elevated temperatures for the development and ATP of a range of engine bleed valves. MCS can therefore offer flexibility and capacity for the flow and performance testing necessary during both the development and mature production of the PW1100G/PW1400G programs.

The system is equipped with the required ancillary moisture and oil separators, having automatic drain provisions between the first and second compression stages, and between the second and third compression stages. The third stage air only requires oil filtration on its output.

For the Air Cooled Oil Cooler, MCS combine in-house testing at our test facility in Coventry with our out-sourced experienced test partners.

The control/data acquisition system will be National Instruments equipment. The interface to the National Instruments system will be through Labview. Labview is graphically-programmed software that interfaces with measurement and control hardware, stores data for analysis, and facilitates sharing results with the customer. Meggitt currently utilizes Labview and National Instruments in conducting qualification testing in the existing air lab.

Meggitt Control Systems has 14 electronic hardware systems; stationary and portable, capable of running fully automated tests. Test automation is made possible with output channels that can source -10 to 10 VDC, 4 to 20 mA, and drive 24 or 28 VDC solenoids and relays with the ability to record hundreds of channels for an individual test allowing for great flexibility in the design of the test. Data can be recorded in intervals set by the user, on set occurrences such as exceeding a specified temperature or pressure in time increments that can be sub-millisecond speeds. Through LabView real time graphs and calculations enable automated instantaneous or user determined pass/fail determination. Advanced signal processing and calculations such as Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) can be run during tests or during post processing of the data. Test results can be saved to text files, excel files and databases or the files themselves can be automatically emailed to the test engineer, in addition programs can be set up for remote monitoring so that the test technician or engineer can view the test in real time and even control the tests while outside of the plant.

The lab expansion control/data acquisition system will has the capability to interface with aircraft control boxes, lab sensors, lab valves and analytical models. Numerous types of sensors will be supported such as current, torque, valve angle, temperatures, pressures and flows. In addition to the sensor interface the lab control system will be able to interface with the aircraft control box utilizing standard aircraft communication protocols such as CAN and ARINC 629. Lab valves will be driven by the National Instruments system. Labview will be programmed to interface with Matlab/Simulink interface as one of the analytical model interfaces.