DATA ACQUISATION AND PROCESSING APPARATUS FOR AIRCRAFT

摘要

A system is disclosed for providing inertial, structural and aerodynamic data from the deflection of a flight vehicle structure due to forces acting thereon. It comprises sensors 12 distributed around the structure which provide signals proportional to the direction and magnitude of the deflections of the structure. These signals are fed to data processing arrangements 16 for detecting and isolating signals from selected ones of the sensors and converting the selected signals into inertial, structural and aerodynamic data. In a preferred embodiment of a sensor 12, light from an L.E.D. is collimated by a lens and reflected back through the lens onto a split photovoltaic cell. It can measure bending of the structure of the order of 10<-9> radians over a range from 0 to 10,000 Hz.