Modernização de Bancada de Teste de FCU utilizando LabVIEW

A fundamental step in maintaining the Brazilian Air Forces’ jets is the testing of engine components. One of these components, the Fuel Control Unit, is one of the most complex, with pressure, rotation and flow variables that need to be controlled and measured to verify if the unit is functioning correctly. The test procedures are composed of a large number of steps, each of them with different values for the variables. The manual execution of the procedures is slow and unreliable, due to parallax and human error. Implementing the automation system presented in this paper eliminates the reliability problems and significantly reduces testing time, with the system controlling and logging the variables. The pressure valves are controlled by brushless DC motors, which in turn are controlled by PWM signals generated by discrete control loops programmed into a FPGA.