Moog FCS Provides Motion Control Test System for China’s New ARJ-21 Regional Jet

Shanghai, February 14th, 2008 — Moog FCS, a part of Moog’s Industrial Systems Group and a leader in providing motion control solutions for high performance flight simulation and leading-edge testing systems to the automotive, aviation and aerospace markets, today announced that they have completed the contract to provide a motion control test system serving the iron bird test of the flight control system of China’s new ARJ-21 regional jet.

The ARJ-21 regional jet being developed by the AVIC I Commercial Aircraft Company (ACAC), a state-operated consortium of companies and aerospace research institutes based in Shanghai, is China’s first regional civil aircraft boasting complete proprietary intellectual property rights. The assembly of the first ARJ-21 jet was completed at the end of December 2007. The iron bird testing with the Moog FCS Motion Control System, which was carried out in parallel to the assembly process, represents a key step before the maiden flight.

The motion control system provided by Moog FCS enables an aircraft manufacturer to simulate a pilot’s displacement and force input through the control column. This represents an efficient means to test the performance, guarantee accurate performance measurements and ensure airworthiness of the flight control system. The testing of the operability and stability of a flight control system is a prerequisite of safe flying of an aircraft and it represented a key test milestone in the research, development and iron bird testing of the ARJ-21 Jet.

The ARJ-21 jet’s iron bird integrated test unit is indispensable to the design optimization and airworthiness certification of the flight control and hydraulic system of the aircraft. Usually iron bird design and testing are carried out separately on both a flight control system iron bird and a hydraulic system iron bird, but the ARJ-21 new regional jet project performed testing of both the flight control system and the hydraulic system of the jet on a single iron bird. This proved to be greatly beneficial to cross-linked testing of the flight control system and hydraulic system. “Moog FCS created an electrodynamic motion control system for the ARJ-21 iron bird test, which fully met with the requirements of our engineers for a compact and efficient design. The entire system development, from design through delivery, lasted only four months. Moog FCS’ local test team in China completed the system integration commissioning, delivery and related technical training of the test engineers as planned,” said a spokesperson from the Acceptance Inspection Team of The First Aircraft Institute of AVIC-I(China Aviation Industry Corporate).

The project also illustrated a new application of Moog's electro-mechanical actuators in the generation of accurate motion signals for an aircraft flight control system. “Compared to conventional approaches, motion control of the control column through electro-mechanical actuators offers an accurate means of testing in an environmentally-friendly manner, which means low power consumption and a cleaner environment,” said Mr. Jason Yang, Sales Manager, Moog FCS, China.

The motion control system supplied by Moog FCS includes the MaxForce Electro-Mechanical Actuators and SmarTEST ONE Servo Controllers. The signal generation system features repeatability as high as 0.02 mm and system bandwidth exceeding 20 Hz. The MaxForce Electro-Mechanical Actuator has a compact, integrated design featuring small size, low inertia, fast response and high accuracy. It eliminates many problems caused by couplers employed in conventional electro-mechanical actuators. Its compact, integrated design allows for a flexible system design for a complete motion control solution.

Moog FCS used the SmarTEST ONE Servo Controller in this system which represents its new generation all-digital servocontrol test controller, which employs an Intel 1.1 GHz processor and the VxWorks real-time operating system with patented model tracking closed-loop control technology to achieve high accuracy and fast itineration response. The SmarTEST ONE Servo Controller has up to four independent channels of servo control, each capable of independently providing closed-loop force and displacement control. A user can, through the servo controller, control the force, displacement or acceleration of the control column. The system‘s open architecture allows for future upgrading and expansion of the test system.

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